Lula now backs lowering age of criminal responsibility in Brazil to 16 for heinous crimes
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Thursday night he now supports lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 for heinous crimes, reversing his longstanding opposition, in a TV Globo interview held just over a week before the presidential runoff.
Lula now backs lowering age of criminal responsibility in Brazil to 16 for heinous crimes
What Lula said
Speaking in a Thursday night interview with TV Globo, president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he had changed his position on the age of criminal responsibility in Brazil, which now stands at 18, and would back cutting it to 16 for heinous crimes. Asked by the reporter whether he meant 16, he answered yes.
"My view, as a Brazilian citizen, is that for any and every heinous crime, I am in favour of lowering the age."
The statement reverses a longstanding policy on his part.
Where the Bolsonaros stand
The shift comes with the presidential runoff in just over a week, in which Lula faces the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who remains slightly ahead at the polls after winning the first round. Lula is seeking to overturn Bolsonaro's 2.2 million-vote first-round lead by appealing to independents and undecided voters.
Flávio Bolsonaro and his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, have long supported going further, wanting the age reduced to 14 rather than 16.
Public opinion and the debate
Recent polls, the latest of them published that week, showed that 80% of the population supports lowering the age of criminal responsibility. On Thursday, before Lula's interview, the proposal had been discussed in the senate.
Opposition to the change remains:
- Human rights organisations and security experts argue that lowering the age does little against violence and increases recruitment into organised crime in Brazil's overcrowded prisons.
- The Episcopal Conference of Brazil criticised the proposal, saying that placing young people prematurely in the prison system tends to deepen cycles of violence and exclusion, undermining their rehabilitation.
What counts as heinous
Under Brazilian law, the list of heinous crimes is broad, ranging from murder and rape to the falsification of medicines and drug trafficking. About a quarter of the 816,000 people serving prison sentences in Brazil were incarcerated for drug trafficking.
The about-face has drawn its own criticism: columnist Josias de Souza wrote in UOL that Lula "began defending what he had always rejected."
The runoff, in which Lula trails Flávio Bolsonaro's 2.2 million-vote first-round lead, is just over a week away.
