Justiça restaurativa nos casos de violência doméstica contra a mulher: aplicações práticas no panorama da lei Maria da Penha

Abstract

Domestic violence against women constitutes one of the greatest social problems faced throughout Brazil. Despite the sanction of the Maria da Penha Law, violence rates remain high. There are several reasons: misapplication of law, lack of proper supporting infrastructure, underpreparedness of the responsible law operators. Another significant factor is the traditional criminal system's inadequacy to solve crimes of this nature, given its low diversity of penal response, limited to imprisonment. From this standpoint, restaurative justice presents itself as an alternative to the current retributive paradigm. This new method poses that crime, prior to constituting state violation, is a problem between two individuals, demanding these to become protagonists in the proceedings. Thus, the victim is called upon to integrate the proceeding, in turn helping them to overcome victimization and to regain autonomy; whereas the offender is incentivised to admit responsibility for the offense and to compensate the victim, in a material or symbolic manner. The restaurative process does not possess a closed format, although it is essential to talk about the offense, ideally in a face-to-face scenario among victim and offender. Through bibliographical research and case studies, a theoretical model coherent with the Brazilian judicial system was devised in which restaurative justice is utilized in cases of domestic violence against women. The victim offender mediation was the restaurative process of choice, applied between accusation and instruction. In a successful application, the process would be conditionally suspended, being conditioned to terms accorded to during the mediation process. It is in thesis concluded that restaurative justice can be an efficient means to fight domestic violence against women for it presents more efficient and specific answers to these cases. Nevertheless, in the abscence of vast experience with this paradigm, its implementation should be conceived into the long term, since it requires previous studies, establishment of pilot projects, surveying the satisfaction of both victim and offender in integrating the experience, in addition to disseminating restaurative justice, explaining its inherent precepts to the population in order for the public to understand the importance and ends of a restaurative process.