Lula backs lowering Brazil's age of criminal responsibility to 16
Brazil's president reverses a longstanding party position days before a runoff against far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, after polls showed 80% public support.
At a glance
- Lula said in a TV Globo interview he now favours lowering Brazil's age of criminal responsibility to 16 for heinous crimes.
- The reversal comes just over a week before a runoff against far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who is slightly ahead.
- Lula cited polls showing 80% support; rights groups say the change would not reduce violence.
Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he now supports lowering the age of criminal responsibility for "heinous" crimes from 18 to 16, reversing a longstanding position held by him and his party. He announced the change during a Thursday night interview with TV Globo.
The U-turn comes with the presidential runoff just over a week away, and is widely seen as an electoral gambit. Lula, the incumbent, faces an uphill battle to overturn the first-round victory of his opponent, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who remains slightly ahead in the polls.
Both the senator and his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, have long supported lowering the age — to 14 rather than 16 — while Lula and his party have always opposed the change. After repeated opinion polls, the latest this week, showed that 80% of the population supports lowering the age, Lula said: "My view, as a Brazilian citizen, is that for any and every heinous crime, I am in favour of lowering the age." He answered "yes" when the reporter asked whether he meant 16.
What counts as a heinous crime
Under Brazilian law the list is extensive, 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 are incarcerated for drug trafficking.
On Thursday, before Lula's interview, the proposal had been discussed in the senate. The Episcopal Conference of Brazil, a Catholic bishops' organisation, criticised it for "not addressing the causes of violence", adding that placing young people "prematurely in the prison system tends to deepen cycles of violence and exclusion, undermining their rehabilitation". Human rights organisations and security experts have long criticised such proposals, arguing that they do little to tackle violence while increasing recruitment into organised crime in Brazil's overcrowded prisons.
Reaction and campaign context
The columnist Josias de Souza wrote in his UOL column that, by reversing his position, Lula "decided to change himself", adding: "It was no ordinary transformation. On public security, Lula turned himself inside out. He began defending what he had always rejected."
The incumbent has doubled down in recent days in an effort to overturn Bolsonaro's 2.2 million-vote first-round lead by appealing to independents and undecided voters. He has secured congressional approval for a shorter working week — a proposal Bolsonaro himself U-turned on and backed at the last minute, when it appeared ready to pass — and debt relief for microentrepreneurs, as well as promising free public transport on weekends.
Source: The Guardian World.
Questions and answers
- What is Brazil's age of criminal responsibility?
- It is currently 18. Lula has said he now supports lowering it to 16 for crimes classified as heinous under Brazilian law, a list that includes murder, rape and drug trafficking.
- Why has Lula changed his position on lowering the age?
- He cited repeated opinion polls, the latest this week, showing 80% of the population supports lowering the age. The reversal comes just over a week before the presidential runoff and is widely seen as an electoral gambit.
- Who is Lula facing in Brazil's presidential runoff?
- Far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who won the first round by 2.2 million votes and remains slightly ahead in the polls.
