A SOCIALIST CRIMINOLOGY AND THE ANTI-CARCERAL CRITICISM IN ROBERTO LYRA’S WORK

(FOUNDATIONS OF THE CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY IN BRAZIL)

Abstract

The present article, part of an extensive research on the foundations of the Brazilian critical criminology, aims at contextualizing the scientific (positivist) and political (socialist) thinking of Roberto Lyra and their developments in the criminal sciences. Often, in the historiography of criminal sciences in Brazil, the study of Roberto Lyra's work is limited to the “dispute between the Schools”, especially the confrontation and the reconciliation with Nélson Hungary on the guidelines of the 1940 Criminal Code; this article, however, shows the guidelines of Lyra's socialist criminology (foundations and postulates). Having as starting point the local scientific criminal law configuration, we seek to identify the criminology basis in Roberto Lyra’s work, his way of conceptualizing crime, and the emphasis of his studies on the relationship between crime and material inequality. The central hypothesis is that even inserted in a positivist matrix, Roberto Lyra assumes a counter-hegemonic position, different from the other positivist criminologists of the first half of the last century, mainly due to his approach to the social question (macrocriminology) and the forceful (and unprecedented) anti-carceral criticism. In conclusion, we point out how Roberto Lyra's undisciplined humanist and left-wing positivism constitutes one of the main legacies to Brazilian critical criminology.