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.

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 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.

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.