Dialogues between restorative justice and Brazilian juvenile law with a focus on adolescent authors of illegal acts

Abstract

This work aims at establishing an interface between Brazilian juvenile law and restorative justice basing on an bibliographic analysis of the doctrine and legislation referring to both themes, focusing on the rights of adolescents who commit crimes. As a means of resolving conflicts, regardless of whether they result in crimes and infractions, the approach of restorative justice is critical of the approach of conventional penal systems, whose focus, based on the retributive paradigm, lies in the guilt and punishment of the offender. This is because the proposal of the restorative approach focuses on settling a moment for reparation, as far as possible, of the damage caused to the victim by the offender. This process occurs on a dialogue basis, founded on the alterity and equality of the participants involved on a restorative practice. Thus, we aimed at understanding the theme of restorative justice and juvenile law separately, focusing on the legislation applicable to the adolescents who commit crimes, so that afterwards an interface between them could be made. It was concluded that the juvenile justice system relates to the proposal of restorative justice, by offering a range of legal institutes and theoretical input so that this form of conflict resolution can be applied in adolescent authors of illegal acts.