Neoliberal rationality in bills involving property crimes in Brazil (2019-2022)

Neoliberal rationality inhabits the State, institutions, bodies, minds and subjectivities. In order to provide its hegemony, it uses various devices, such as the penal system itself and its mechanism of primary criminalization. The research selected one of its repercussions: the legislative repression of behaviors related to heritage. Therefore, the paper seeks to examine whether the bills related to property crimes, presented in the 56th legislature of the Brazilian National Congress (2019-2022), serve this purpose and if they explain the practical functioning of neoliberalism. The aim is to understand, first, how punishment operates under neoliberal rationality and how the State embraces the latter to execute the former; and, in continuity, to analyze the normative propositions, with the intention of explaining and ratifying traces linked to the hegemonic reason. The methodology adopted documental analysis, legislative analysis and bibliographic review. It could be seen that the Projects, among other explanations, were sponsored by a neoliberal rationale, being marked by the appeal for more punishment and the logic of criminalizing poverty and individual responsibility. In addition, the lack of empirical foundations, the discourse of social panic, low approval and the recurrence of increasingly specific and casuistic cases were other trends observed.