Tício x Joana: o gênero no sistema penal em crimes de violência doméstica

Abstract

This Masters dissertation intended to investigate the jurisprudence at the Minas Gerais Justice Court and at the Superior Courts concerning the application of Law nº 11.340/06 (Maria da Penha Law). Through a gender view, encompassing feminist theories and critical criminology, and its interface with Criminal Law and Criminal Processes, the main objective of this research was to identify and analyze the debates raised by the application of Maria da Penha Law by the judiciary, in concrete cases. With an emphasis on jurisprudential dispute in regards to the natureof legal prosecution for crimes of domestic violence, we sought to identify and problematize the values and conceptions of gender, which underlie latent in the fundamentals of the analyzed decisions. We aimed to show that the understanding, which has been consolidated in the Court imposed significant adjustments to the verification of the offenses in question, with a consequent re-privatization of the domestic conflict and the reproduction of gender stereotypes, contrary to the objectives pursued by the Maria da Penha Law and the reasons which motivated its creation. Still, inquiring about the reasons that make the offended to often renounce the punishment of their perpetrators, we sought to demonstrate that this attitude, when understood more deeply, can be attributed to an inability of the criminal justice system to meet the demands and needs of abused women. From these considerations, the research aimed to point out the limits of the criminal justice system, and of its punitive logic, to treat the problem of domestic violence.