El Planteo report (Goog;le Translate)
Brazil you have begun to feel, in practice, the effects of the decision from the Supreme Court of decriminalize the possession of marijuana for personal use. A large working group coordinated by him CNJ (National Council of Justice) reviewed almost 30,000 cases related to small quantities of the plant and annulled 3,676 convictions, all from people discovered with up to 40 grams and no evidence of trafficking.
This figure represents 12.4% of the total cases analyzed in the last eight years and marks the first large-scale application of the new Supreme Court interpretation, which considers a consumer to be any person who owns up to 40 grams of marijuana or up to six female plants.
The review of these sentences occurs after the decision of the Supreme Federal Court, issued in July 2024, which eliminated the criminal classification of possession of marijuana for personal consumption and ordered the CNJ to create working groups to correct distortions in sentences handed down under the old interpretation of the Brazilian Drug Law.
In addition to the amount, the courts had to observe the absence of other illicit substances at the time of arrest and lack of evidence indicating traffic. This criterion is essential, since 62.5% of the cases analyzed in Brazil were convictions for trafficking, even when the person was carrying minimal amounts of marijuana. Likewise, the majority of reviews focused on three states: Santa Catarina, São Paulo and Minas Gerais, which together represented 83% of the acquittals.
Far beyond marijuana: Task Force reveals structural flaws
The 2025 working group went beyond cannabis and exposed deep weaknesses in the Brazilian penal system. The second area of focus reviewed the preventive detentions of pregnant women, nursing mothers and mothers of children up to 12 years old or those responsible for people with disabilities. This issue has been supported by Supreme Court decisions since 2018, when HC 143.641 established that these women must serve their sentences under house arrest, except in exceptional cases.
In January, the minister Gilmar Mendes he reiterated the need to comply with this sentence, stating that there was “unjustified resistance” on the part of local courts. During the working group, they were analyzed 6,948 cases, which resulted in the release of 2,226 women, while another 2,858 remained in prison, mainly for violent crimes. Notably, 21% of cases only required updating registration information; the women already released were still registered as prisoners, which reveals serious flaws in the information systems.
Another area of focus analyzed 16,400 preventive detentions lasting more than one year. In 3,104 of these cases, prison was replaced by precautionary measures such as electronic surveillance or house arrest. In 16.1% of cases, the problem was not legal, but bureaucratic: people who had already been released or even died continued to appear as prisoners in the databases. The working group also dedicated a phase to the analysis of delayed procedural incidents in the SEEU (Unified Electronic Enforcement System) and in computer systems.
Of the 86,300 incidents mapped, only 24.6% were effectively reviewed; even so, 6,295 incidents of termination of the sentence were granted, 2,513 execution requirements and 1,558 progressions to the semi-open regime were recognized. For the program coordinator Doing Justice, Valdirene Daufemback, the great challenge lies precisely in the more than 65,000 unanalyzed incidents, many of which could contribute to easing the burden on the prison system if resolved.
The full report of the Criminal Procedure Working Group – Fair Sentence 2025 is available here.
