The Brazilian criminal recidivism: Reflections under the perspective of the comparative law

The criminal recidivism, aggravating circumstance of the penalty, is one of the oldest institutes of the Brazilian legal order and, although the uncounted reforms on criminal and criminal procedural law in the course of history, it has suffered very few changes, predominating the automatic imposition in miscellaneous process stages under the justification of crime fighting, without a detailed analysis about the modus operandi, the real objectives and elements. Thus, the following study aims to address the thematic from the study of comparative law in order to demonstrate how the criminal recidivism is applied on the selected countries in this opportunity, what demonstrates several ways to ponder this penalty aggravating, that must be compatible with the respect to the democratic essence of the criminal procedural law, especially the Brazilian one, based on the prevalence of the fundamental rights and guarantees.