Racial injury and prejudice in the Armed Forces: proposals for a hermeneutics aimed at protecting vulnerable groups

DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/15722755

Abstract

The guiding principle of this work is the analysis of the structural elements of the crime of discrimination from the victim's perspective, in view of the advent of Law No. 14,688, of September 20th , 2023, which included qualified insult in the military criminal legal system, consisting of the use of elements related to race, color, ethnicity, religion, origin, sexual orientation or the condition of an elderly person or person with a disability, according to article 216, §2, of the Military Penal Code. The new criminal type requires the reconstruction of the role of the offended party in confronting prejudice in the military housing, focusing on the perspective of the victim of racial insult, as a subject capable of mobilizing the law, providing a reinterpretation of the elements that make up this type of crime of targeted hostility. Thus, the question is: should the harm caused to the victim have a prominent role in the structure of the crime of racial insult in the Armed Forces? Is it possible to examine the crime of racial hate crime not only from the perspective of the perpetrator's intention (animus injuriandi), but also from the perspective of the victim?