Criminalidade e populismo penal: um estudo das matérias criminais na revista Veja de 2002 a 2012

Abstract

This paper seeks to identify, based on data from periodic VEJA, if there are traces from what David Garland designs through the concept of penal populism on the coverage of those criminal events of significant national impact from 2002 to 2012.Through discourse analysis and representation of signs, i try to investigate the possible existence of criminal elements from the perspective of populism in the discourse of the magazine. We start from the assumption that the magazine follows the opinion of their readers, its consumer public. Thus, the interest in VEJA magazine is justified because it is the magazine with the largest circulation between the Brazilian's middle class, which allows us to be very close to a position, that most likely is, the vast majority's of the ruling class in the country today. So the aim of this analysis, is to identify what is the concept that we have of crime, which the most striking view in the media of criminal policies. The hypothesis is that the magazine has described in its speech, features described as elements of so-called current penal populism, such as victimization, fear of crime, punitivism and disbelief in rehab.