Projects

Transformation of justice system

The IDDD monitors the application of criminal law by the justice system to ensure the consolidation of advances and to prevent illegalities and setbacks when it comes to human rights. With this very goal, from independent researches and exchanges with national and international knowledge production centers, we create innovative experiences of legal practices, always guided by the respect to the due process of law. Besides that, through the institute's strategic litigation field, we influence trials of great impact, seeking decisions that produce and strengthen achievements when it comes to human rights, to individual guarantees and, especially, to the right to a fair hearing. This set of initiatives around this axis, therefore, seeks to make the dream of a different criminal justice system, truly democratic, fair and with greater reliability, come true.

  • Evidence under suspicion

    Develops and proposes changes that face the precariousness of the evidence produced during the criminal process and the routine disregard for individual guarantees by the brazilian Justice

  • IDDD in the courts

    Incidence in national and international courts to change the jurisprudence, aiming fairer decisions and knowledge, attentive to the right of defense and individual guarantees

  • Custody Hearing

    IDDD has a long history in the national debate on custody hearings, from advocating for creation to monitoring its implementation in the country

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Guarantee to Right of Defense

It expresses the institute's primary mission: to foster in society and State institutions the idea that everyone has the right to quality technical defense, to the due process of law and the presumption of innocence. For this, two assumptions are essential: to have access to the defense itself at all stages of the criminal process; and information that opens the way for civic culture used to living with defensive ideals, regardless of the profile of the accused and of what the accusation was. Besides promoting educational activities in and out of spaces of deprivation of liberty, the IDDD works at no charge in emblematic cases, providing defense of excellence, regardless of the trajectory, crime of which the defendant is being accused or the defendant's social class. Based on such practice, we also elaborate studies in order to improve criminal defense.

  • The Inmate Education for Citizenship Program

    With the first edition held in 2010, the project promotes formative meetings in the provisional detention and penitentiary centers in São Paulo

  • Right of Defense in the Trial by Jury

    By means of an agreement signed with the Public Defender of the State of São Paulo, lawyers associated with the Institute work as volunteers in the defense of those accused of willful crimes against life

  • First defense

    Free legal assistance in police districts, with the aim of guiding detainees on police interrogation and accompanying them until the possible offer of the complaint

  • Effective Criminal Defense in Latin America

    Diagnosis of the effectiveness of the right of defense in Brazil, produced in partnership with Conectas Human Rights

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The End of Mass Incarceration

Brazil is now the third country with the largest prison population in the world. Even so, national authorities’ practices, especially the practices of the justice system, indicates a false belief that the more people are imprisoned, the better the response those institutions give to society. Seeking to confront this punitive attitude, the IDDD has questioned the over-incarceration as the best way to deal with the high crime rates and spoke out against the selectivity of the criminal justice system, which is reflected in the overrepresentation of young black people and those with low schooling as defendants and inmates throughout the country. The arrests come, in general, from arrests in the act that violate several rules (and sometimes happen in a violent way) after low quality investigations, with fragile evidence, and consequently and questionable sentences. Through data production, the joint efforts by lawyers in favor of extrication, the strategic litigation and political influence in the Legislative Power, we seek to expose and combat illegalities and rights violations reproduced by the Brazilian justice and prison systems, calling attention to the importance of strengthening criminal alternative policies.

  • Prison Task Force Covid-19

    Faced with the catastrophic potential of the pandemic in an already collapsed prison system, IDDD initiated a new task force project committed with the release of pre-trial prisoners in groups at risk to Covid-19

  • Free motherhood

    The # MãesLivres project was born in November 2017 to put into practice the Legal Framework for Early Childhood and release mothers at the Pirajuí Women's Penitentiary, in the countryside of São Paulo

  • Criminal Justice Network

    Articulation of organizations that, since 2015, are committed with the agenda of human rights, criminal justice and public security through its influence on the Legislative, debates and campaigns

  • Sentence on Trial

    Result of a partnership with Heco Produções, documentary “Sentence on Trial” goes to the hell of life in Brazilian prisons to expose the precariousness of the country's criminal justice system

  • The right to look

    Cultural contest involving prison establishments, detention units and women's custodians in São Paulo

  • Freedom on focus

    Conjugated legal assistance at the Provisional Detention Center I in Guarulhos, SP. and incidence in the Judiciary, in order to face the abusive use of provisional imprisonment

  • Livreria Project

    Created with the objective of stimulating the structure of bibliographic collections in prison units in São Paulo

  • SOS Freedom

    Analysis of the impact of the precautionary measures law in the São Paulo Judiciary and legal assistance to more than 340 people arrested

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The Strengthening of the Rule of Law

The IDDD monitors bills, laws, and other normative acts or regulations with some kind of impact upon the criminal justice system, from the proposal by the Legislative Power to the application of the norm by the Executive and the Judiciary. Especially in the Legislative Power, we focus on strategies of advocacy to make sure that parliamentarians commit to the Federal Constitution and the human rights. With the same goal, we participate, on the one hand, from the creation of bills, from public hearings and other initiatives that strengthen the right of defense and, on the other hand, we engage in actions to control setbacks regarding criminal and democratic issues.

  • IDDD in Congress

    Monitoring and operate on the legislative process stimulating progress and seeking to contain setbacks in the area of ​​human rights

  • Critical look

    Over two years, IDDD held debates in the newsrooms of the country's main newspapers to talk about the importance of a media attentive to the right of defense and individual guarantees

  • Education for the Rights

    Created to disseminate information on fundamental rights in communities historically impacted by human rights violations

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