Contemporary Slave Labor and Criminal Protection beyond Freedom of Movement: An Analysis of the Jurisprudence of the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice
Abstract
This article aims to analyze the existing problematic about the indispensability or not of the restriction of the worker’s freedom to configure the crime of reduction to a condition analogous to that of a slave, a theme that has been the object of legal discussions in cases judged by the Superior Court of Justice. To this end, an exploratory, deductive and qualitative research was conducted on the legal and dogmatic aspects (criminal and constitutional) based on a bibliographic review on the subject, followed by the analysis of two decisions of the STJ from 2016 and 2020. The study identified that the STJ consolidated understanding is that the article 149 of the Brazilian Penal Code crime does not require the curtailment of the victim’s status libertatis, which in addition to being in accordance with the constitutional dictates, is in line with the current position of the criminal doctrine that sees in the penal provision in reference, together with the protection of freedom of locomotion, the protection of self-determination, the dignity of the worker and the organization of labor, to encompass the protection of various forms of contemporary slavery
