Bill of Popular Initiative on Heinous Crimes
The Bill of Popular Initiative on heinous crimes originated Act no. 8,930, popularly known as the "Law of heinous crimes". The project itself was called the "The Glória Perez Popular Initiative Project", as a homage to its main sponsor. Soap Opera screen writer Glória Perez initiated the campaign to collect signatures in 1992, after the death of her daughter, Daniella Perez, murdered by the actor with whom she acted side-by-side in a soap opera at the time, a crime that generated great commotion in the country. The bill proposed a new text for Article 1 of Law No. 8.072/1990 on heinous crimes. The proposal was to include the crime of qualified homicide to the list of crimes considered heinous. The final content of the project listed the following crimes in that category: homicide, when practiced as an activity typical of extermination groups, even if committed by only one agent, and qualified homicide; armed robberies; extortion qualified by death; extortion by kidnapping and in a qualified form; epidemic followed by death; and genocide. During the conference on its compliance to legal procedures, however, it was noted that the project had formal defects related to the collection of signatures, preventing it from being presented as a Bill of Popular Initiative. The subject matter of the project was then incorporated by the Executive branch and, after some amendments, the President of the Republic presented Bill no. 4.146/93. Act no. 8,930 came into effect on September 6th, 1994. Laws of Popular Initiative are provided for in Brazil by the Constitution of 1988. In order to commence this legislative process, the bill must be supported by one per cent of the national electorate in at least five states and at least 0.3% of voters from each state.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- embedded in the constitution/legislation
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens civil society
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields no decision
- Co-Governance
- no
Means
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Ends
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