“The police work ceases when it starts judicial proceeding”: the criminal justice reforms in nineteenth-century Brazil

Abstract

The paper presents the historical background of Brazil’s 19th-century criminal justice reforms, focusing on the process of gradual specialization of judicial and police activities. It stresses the political framework that led to successive reforms through a bibliographic review and analyses of political debates of the 19th century. It defends that, beyond criminal proceedings, the reforms incorporated different ideologies of criminal justice e analyses how and in what measure the 1832’s Code of Criminal Procedure, the Law of 3 of December 1841 and the Law 2.033 of 1871 regulated the interactions between the police and the Judiciary branch, with special interest in the “inquérito policial” and what were the consequences of this legal instrument.