Custos vulnerabilis e o reconhecimento da vulnerabilidade de adolescentes acusados

Abstract

Drawing from the perspective of Luigi Ferrajoli's penal garantism, which emphasizes the limitation of state punitive power and the protection of the fundamental rights of accused individuals, this article discusses the concept of Custos Vulnerabilis and the role of the Public Defender's Office in providing qualified legal defense within the framework of juvenile justice. The role of the Public Defender's Office, vested with greater significance by the 1988 Constitution and Complementary Law No. 80/1994, came to encompass custos vulnerabilis as an essential public duty. However, the articulation of the concept in the face of the vulnerability often attributed to accused adolescents seems to favor a judicial application that results in the trivialization of measures more severe than those applied to adults in similar criminal situations, when precisely the opposite would be expected. The text proposes an evaluation of this idiosyncratic dimension in situations involving accused adolescents and the abusive use of coercive and detention measures.