The cry before the sentence: Public lynching and the failure of criminal Legality

Abstract

This article investigates public lynching in Brazil as a complex sociological and legal phenomenon, aiming to understand how this practice reflects the deep distrust of the population in the penal system and its implications for the constitutional order. The study starts from the premise that the collective perception of impunity and ineffectiveness of public security and criminal justice institutions acts as a catalyst for society to assume the monopoly of punishment (taking the law into its own hands). Methodologically, it employs a critical bibliographic review and documentary analysis to trace the origins of the phenomenon in the culture of violence and discuss its implications in the context of the Democratic Rule of Law. The results demonstrate that lynching not only violates fundamental constitutional principles (human dignity, due process), with serious implications for social order, but also reveals the weakening of state authority in its duty of formal social control. It is concluded that confronting this collective violence requires more than individual penal repression, demanding urgent intersectoral public policies focused on social and legal education, essential to restore institutional trust and reaffirm the principle of legality as a non-negotiable basis of justice.