Epidemic crime and pandemic criminal:

contribuition to understandig and delimiting crimes against public health

Abstract

This work is located within the scope of crimes against public health, precisely to delimit the crime of epidemic and criminal pandemic, the set of criminal conduct that emerged vehemently in the strange and exceptional times experienced since the year 2020. In this scenario, factual situations arose that challenge the imputation for the practice of the crime of an epidemic, so that the research problem consists of the following question: is it possible to impute for the crime of an epidemic in the midst of the pandemic? The first hypothesis consists in the semantic logic of such imputation being possible; and the second, a little more daring, based on the impossibility of this imputation, consists in - at the very least - delimiting the crime of an epidemic and invoking the other possible criminal types applicable to conduct resulting from this state of pandemic. The main objectives are linked to verifying the contours of the epidemic crime and its closest types, defining, to some extent, the legitimate paths for possible imputation of these crimes. The relevance is given by the daily practice that reported criminal events typical of pandemic times, almost always linked to the crime of an epidemic, challenging the discernment between this criminal type and the others that are related to it, demanding analysis. The deductive method of approach was adopted, basing the research technique on the bibliographic, exploratory and qualitative type, due to its eminently practical bias in reading the topic, allowing it to be concluded that there is a need for new lights of analysis and verification of the criminal charge in regarding crimes of this nature.