A informação ao consumidor e o direito penal: um estudo sobre a legitimidade da intervenção penal nas relações deconsumo

Abstract

Consumer protection is one of the guidelines of the Brazilian economic order. The legislature extended to the consumers the criminal protection of their rights, and thus incriminated acts that are potentially harmful to consumer relations. This work focuses on behaviors that make consumer information dishonest and that are incriminated by the Brazilian consumer protection, specifically those contained in the criminal types described in Arts. 63, 64, 66, 67, and 68 of this Decree. Mere conduct and abstract danger are treated as crimes characterizedby the anticipation of criminal protection for actions prior to the damage to the consumer. The object of the penal protection related to dishonest information is the right to information. This legal asset is classified as collective ownership. As it has a personal referent, it is placed at theservice of protecting of individual consumer goods, such as physical safety and property safety, health, and life. The criminal intervention in consumer relations is part of economic and criminal law, and as such raises various doctrinal disputes. In this sense, the legitimacy ofsome of the charges now studied is discussed from the constitutional principles of criminal legality, offensiveness, minimal intervention, insignificance, culpability, and proportionality. Initially, the origins and reasons of the right to information are researched along with theirextra-penal legal treatment. Subsequent to the aforementioned dogmatic discussions, a critical study is carried out of the criminal types in kind. In this last phase, the analysis of relevant elements departed to the general part of those that relate to the typical structure.