The federal justice act in combating corruption in southern Brazil

Abstract

This article studies the operation of the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF4) in the fight against corruption crimes. Judgments produced by the TRF4 criminal courts between 2003 and 2016 underwent text analysis using the dictionary method, seeking to outline the profi le of crimes and defendants. Despite the changes in the web accountability institutions, with the outbreak of major federal police operations, technological uses, new legal devices and a high degree of concentration between the agencies, there is a small proportion of grand corruption crime, involving middle and high-ranking bureaucrats and more sophisticated crimes with greater fi nancial value. Crimes involving contraband and petty corruption take up much of the day to day of the judiciary in the south region of the country, at least in the criminal intermediate courts, where the judge appeals decisions coming from specialized and generalist criminal courts.