At the College of Human and Social Sciences (FCHS-UNESP), the project is coordinated by Ana Gabriela Mendes Braga, Professor of Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses in Law, and is developed within the scope of the Prisons and Liberties Research Center (NEPAL). The proposal has a team composed by seven other researchers: one PhD student, Maiane Serra, one Master, Mariana Zoccal, two Master’s students, Leticia Ferreira and Paola Cristina Oliveira, and also three undergraduate students, Giovanna Marques, Isabel de Oliveira and Sofia Ricci.
The Feminists Judgments projects developed in other countries – Canada, England, United States, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Australia – showed that the rewriting of judicial decisions from a feminist perspective presents alternative paths that Law could follow. The books and articles on rewriting and the process of judicial decision-making from a feminist perspective produced by these projects showed that this perspective, at the moment of decision, could change the argumentation, and even the final understanding of the case. That happens due to the different approach to the case that a feminist perspective provides, by emphasizing or taking into account aspects that were not considered important during the original decision-making process, but which, from a feminist perspective, have relevance and prominence.
In Brazil, the project will be developed by academics from several institutions, and will have as its object decisions from different themes and instances, taking into account the Brazilian particularities in relation to the other countries that developed their projects. From this approach, the analysis to be developed by the Unesp researchers will focus on the feminist perspective in decisions that approach the theme of “maternity and prison”.
It will be adopted as a paradigm case for rewriting the preventive detention decision of Rosângela Sibele de Almeida Melo for the conduct of food theft. Rosângela is a 41-year-old woman, unemployed, mother of five (with ages of 2, 3, 6, 8 and 16) and homeless. Her detention happened on September 29, 2021, for food theft from a market located at Vila Mariana, in São Paulo. The stolen objects that appear in the Occurrence Bulletin were two “Coca-Cola” soft drinks of 600ml each, a “Tang” juice powder, and two packages of instant noodles, valued at R$21.69. In an informal statement given to military police, Rosângela said that she stole the products because “she was hungry”.
During the initial investigation procedures, the delegate and the prosecutor who worked on the case spoke in favor of converting the red-handed detention into preventive. The request was heard by a judge who, when basing her decision, highlighted elements such as Rosângela’s reincidence (previously arrested for two similar thefts) and lack of fixed residence and paid work, which supposedly indicated that she was committing crimes as a “means of livelihood”, accentuating her dangerousness.
At the same time, the fact that Rosângela is the mother of children under the age of 12 – although mentioned in the case file – was disregarded at the time of the judicial decision. For reasons similar to those that supported her preventive detention, the complaint filed by the Public Ministry against Rosângela was received, initiating a criminal process.
The case, however, took proportions that extrapolated the judiciary and the legal environment, especially due to the big media coverage carried out by alternative press vehicles. Taken as a notorious example of material atypicality (by application of the principle of insignificance), several criticisms were directed at the Justice System for its selective performance. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, with growing statistics of hunger and unemployment, Rosangela’s prison gave face to the scenario of criminalization of poverty prevailing in the country.
After the media repercussion of the case, on October 13, 2021, Rosângela was granted her freedom by the Superior Court of Justice, in a Habeas Corpus judgment that blocked the criminal action, by applying the principle of insignificance, given the negligible value of the stolen objects.
By rewriting the case, we seek to understand what results could have been obtained, had it been conducted from a feminist perspective, in order to locate the possibilities of structural change through the application of Law, beyond individual legal achievements.
Feminist Judgments Team FCHS-UNESP