| This article is part of a series on the |
 |
|---|
The system of Brazilian criminal justice comes from the civil law of Western Europe, in particular Portuguese law, which derives from Roman law. The earliest legal documents in Brazil were land grants and charters dating to the early 16th century century, which continued to be used until independence in 1822. Various basic principles of law are enshrined in the 1988 Constitution, such as the principle of legality and the principle of human dignity.
Various institutions work together to implement the criminal justice system, including the National Congress which passes laws to define what acts are considered criminal in the Penal Code and codifies the criminal procedures for implementing them; three national and multiple state-level police forces to prevent and combat crime and hold alleged perpetrators for prosecution; the judiciary, including 92 courts at the federal and state levels to interpret the codes and hear prosecutions and judge perpetrators; and a correctional system to punish and rehabilitate convicted criminals.
The actual workings of the criminal justice system has had its ups and downs reflecting Brazil's history of colonialism, Empire, Republics, military dictatorship, and democracy, and a tradition of persistent, endemic corruption and scandals. There have been attempts to reign in corruption: in the 2010s, the massive Operation Car Wash investigation lasted eight years, extended to multiple foreign countries, and resulted in a thousand indictments and half a billion dollars in fines, affected three presidents, and imprisoned one.
Rates of crime in Brazil are elevated. Brazil leads the world in the number of homicides; adjusted for population it ranks 18th. In the correctional system, although laws guarantee prisoners a livable amount of space and decent living conditions, in fact prisons are very overcrowded, typically housing two to five times the number of inmates they were designed for.