A Study on Maria da Penha Law’s Justice Production Modes in Santa Catarina

Abstract

This article aims to describe the practices in the criminal justice that are constructed, based on law n. 11.340/2006 – known as Maria da Penha Law –, by male and female judges in charge of the execution of this legal provision in the Criminal Court and in the Gender Violence Court in the State of Santa Catarina. This is an ethnographic study based on interviews with law operators; field diaries constructed from observing trials; and documental analysis from legal processes. The research revealed that the usual practices of the law operators in the legal treatment of cases regarded as “domestic and family violence against the women” were conducted by the personal “styles” of each male/female judge when executing the ratification trials, typifying the means of communication and interactions based on moral values, characterized by different notions of gender, family and justice. The study of the practices of equalization and judgment highlighted that the modes of producing justice were linked to a moral dimension, veiled to a certain degree in the discourses of the law operators as they use the legal codes. The political positions of the law operators about the process of criminalization of the “domestic and family violence against women” resulted, many times, in practices that diverge from the expectations of the feminist movements regarding the sanctioning of Maria da Penha law, showing the importance of the debate of the judicialization of the social relations in the field of gender studies.