A “corrupcao” do Sistema Penal: o caso brasileiro

We seek, in this article, from a sociological analysis of criminal law, to reflect on how social exclusion influences the very configuration of the crime and the criminal. Our hypothesis, based on the Systems Theory of Niklas Luhmann, is that there is, especially in the so-called “periphery” of modernity, a ‘corruption’ of the criminal system, in that it operates with distinctions that are alien to it, including only people who are excluded from other social sub-systems. We base the research on official data on the Brazilian criminal and penitentiary system, these data corroborating the impressions derived from field research.