THE SPECTACLE OF EFFICIENCY: PRETRIAL DETENTION AND THE EROSION OF PENAL GUARANTEES AS A NEO-PUNISHMENT

Abstract

This article critically examines pretrial detention in contemporary Brazilian criminal procedure, understanding it as a practice that, beyond its formally assigned precautionary function, has increasingly assumed the contours of a neo-punishment within what may be described as the “spectacle of penal efficiency.” The central hypothesis is that the expansion and banalization of custodial measures cannot be explained solely through procedural dogmatics, requiring an analysis that incorporates the political, symbolic, and media-driven elements that permeate the operation of the criminal justice system. The study adopts a interdisciplinary approach, drawing primarily on Michel Foucault’s contributions concerning punishment, discipline, and punitive visibility, as well as on Loïc Wacquant’s analyses of incarceration as a tool of social management. In dialogue with critical criminology and criminal procedural theory particularly the works of Cezar Roberto Bitencourt and Aury Lopes Jr. the article argues that pretrial detention has been progressively re-signified as a symbolic mechanism for demonstrating state efficiency, operating less as a safeguard of the criminal process and more as a contemporary form of anticipatory punishment and public exposure of the accused. It concludes that this transformation directly undermines the core of constitutional penal and procedural guarantees, especially the presumption of innocence and the duty to provide reasoned judicial decisions, thereby contributing to the erosion of the rationality underlying the Democratic Rule of Law.