Necropolítica e encarceramento em massa: uma análise de processos judiciais por tráfico de drogas em Salvador-BA no ano de 2020

Abstract

This work investigates the relationship between drug trafficking judicial proceedings and racism. It is inserted within the field of empirical research in law, using a qualitative approach and descriptive statistics, turning to methods such as document research and interviews. The corpus is comprised of 197 processes with 252 defendants, from the three specialized drug courts in Salvador-BA, whose sentences were published between January and June 2020 in the Electron- ic Justice Diary. We also rely on five interviews with judges from the Court of Jus- tice of the State of Bahia, who work or have worked with drug trafficking suits, aim- ing to directly access how (and if) the judges see racism in these types of proceed- ings, as well as their thoughts on the “war on drugs” context. When conducting the analysis, it was observed that the people who answer to this type of charge are almost exclusively young, black, poor men, with a few years of school attendance. It was verified that the dynamics of punitive power and secondary criminalization actions (by the police) occur mainly in the black neighboorhoods of the city. The statistical outcome of these processes have as main conclusion a policy of repres- sion of drugs led by the actions of the Military Police, with little prior investigation, founded on being caught in flagrante. There is also little seizing of money, weap- ons, or even drugs. It was also possible to characterize the judgements that sen- tence, absolve, or nullify these processes. The punishment for drug trafficking is the one that most incarcerates black people in Brazil. Among the fragilities found in this study, both when it comes to drug legislation and in the concrete cases judged by the Court of Justice of Bahia, notably in relation to the probative ele- ments, the black population remains having the enjoyments of their life limited, or rather, cut down by the criminal justice system. Under the banner of “war on drugs” which, as discovered in this research, is a war against black people and the periphery, the Judiciary Branch has not been fulfilling its constitutional role of en- suring rights, working as an organ that reiterates and endorses the control and segregation of the black population.