The judicial family operation in initial hearings

Abstract

In this article, we discuss to what extent the coincidence of views, between judges, prosecutors and solicitors, on what to do with the person arrested in the act is a result of the way the ‘judicial family’ works. By judicial family we understand the bonds of friendship formed by legal practitioners, initially, due to the homogeneity of their social origins, which is strengthened by personal and work interactions, in which exchanges occur over a long period of time, creating similar worldviews. To test this hypothesis, we used data collected in 651 initial hearings, held in Belo Horizonte between September 2015 and March 2016, with information about the defendant and the crime, and characteristics of the law practitioners (judges, prosecutors and public and private solicitors). Findings indicate that the Minas Gerais judicial family is made up of prosecutors and judges, who agree on the profiles of defendants and crimes that should be subject to preventive detention. The judicial family also incorporates the public defender’s office, but only when solicitors are permanently assigned to custody hearings. In this situation, public defenders have a greater chance of preventing the judge's decision from reflecting the prosecutor's request, showing how continuous interaction creates the possibility of reciprocity between operators.