Sistema carcerário brasileiro e seus gastos públicos: uma proposição à luz de evidências empíricas

Abstract

Given the reality of the current Brazilian Prison System, the present study aims to elucidate the relationship of prison system spending with economic, social and crime characteristics. A qualitative and quantitative approach is carried out, with the support of the Penitentiary Department (DEPEN) databases and the Public Security Secretariats of the states of interest. The search for results and empirical propositions of a present pattern within the institutions is an important tool to draw a framework of the penitentiary system in the country. With a methodology of Simultaneous Equation System for the year 2016 and as already consolidated in the literature that of crime and public spending have simultaneity, the proposal is to verify if such evidence can be applied also to the Brazilian prison system. The main results confirm: i) the need for this type of methodology, which was used to eliminate the bias that could be caused due to the problem of endogeneity of prison costs and crime; ii) the validation of the instruments are acceptable as exogenous to the variable of interest, namely prison spending; iii) acceptance of the simultaneity of the relationship between public spending and criminality, which in this case was built from the mean time of conviction of the prisons, being the increase of 1% of the average time of conviction of the determining prison for the average increase of 0.26 % of prison costs. In spite of the econometric analysis, the possibility exists of the existence of cyclical relation in the prison system, which would explain the high expenses and overcrowding of the prisons. Based on the theory of crime costs, this phenomenon generates a reduction in social welfare and, in turn, generates an increase in prison costs, indicating a cyclical orientation due to the lack of effectiveness and control of prison costs, which would explain the situation current Brazilian prison.