“The police arrest, but the courts release”
the winning report on custody hearings in Brazilian society and their authoritarian foundations
Keywords:
Custody Hearing, National Council of Justice, Rhetoric, Authoritarianism, Winning AccountAbstract
https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2026/93518
The object of this article is to research the two main discourses on custody hearings in Brazil - the protective and guarantor discourse, emanating from the National Council of Justice, and the punitive discourse, which sees custody hearings as an invitation to impunity. Using the method of analytical rhetoric, both accounts are observed at their strategic and material levels. The aim is to analyze how the discourse that “the police arrest, but justice lets them go free” is in line with an authoritarian present and past in Brazilian society, and manages to prevail in custody hearings in Brazil. We conclude that the dominant discourse is the result of the authoritarian mentality that shapes Brazilian society, which is responsible for the account that constitutes reality itself, in other words, the material rhetoric, so that the strategic rhetoric employed by the CNJ has not been able to change it.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Gisele Souza de Oliveira, João Maurício Adeodato (in memoriam), Juão Vitor Santos Silva (Autor/a)

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