Maira Rocha Machado
Biography
Maíra Rocha Machado joined São Paulo Law School of Fundação Getulio Vargas as Professor of Law in 2004. She was formerly a full time researcher at the same institution. She teaches courses on Criminal Law, Criminology and Sociology of Law, as well as seminars on the interaction among criminal, administrative and international law. She graduated in Law from the University of São Paulo (1997) and obtained her Ph.D. in Philosophy and Theory of Law at the University of São Paulo (2003). Her current research focuses on sentencing and theoretical aspects of punishment, economic crimes and corruption and transnational organizations. She has recently completed a post-doctorate program at Ottawa University, where she researched minimum punishment as a form of political intervention at the judicial sentence. She is the author of The Internationalization of Criminal Law (2004) and co-editor of Money Laundering and Asset Recovery: Brazil, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and Switzerland (2006), New Directions in the Governance of Justice and Security (2006) (all in Portuguese) and La rationalité pénale moderne : réflexions conceptuelles et explorations empiriques (2011, forthcoming).
Abstract
Modern Penal Rationality Left Behind: A Call for Innovative Thinking and Practice in Criminal Law
One of the main challenges for the development of law is the crystallisation of certain ideas concerning crime and punishment that have been acting as huge barriers to innovation. This think piece is, therefore, an effort to organise the results of my previous and ongoing research around the resistance surrounding innovative ideas that can be considered better equipped to deal with the complexity of contemporary social problems. To accomplish this goal, this piece will present a simplified sketch of these ideas concerning crime and punishment – the concept of ‘modern penal rationality’ as developed by Alvaro Pires (Ottawa University). It will also briefly introduce two problematic manifestations of the high level of sedimentation of these ideas: the widespread use of minimum punishments in national legal systems and the lack of space for restorative justice mechanisms in the international legal order.
