DEFENSORIA PÚBLICA E ACESSO À JUSTIÇA: desafios, estratégias e avanços no processo de expansão da Defensoria Pública do Estado do Maranhão

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the challenges, advances and strategies adopted in the expansion process of the Public Defender's Office of the State of Maranhão, between 2014 and 2020. It carries out a study, through bibliographic research, of the particularities of the constitution of capitalism and the Brazilian social formation, as well as about the ways of confronting the social issue in Brazil until the enactment of the 1988 Federal Constitution, which marks a new standard of social protection in Brazil. It characterizes the different systems of legal assistance. It presents the evolution of legal assistance in Brazilian constitutionalism, through bibliographic and documentary research. It evidences the public model of legal assistance that attends the realization of equality and social justice. It understands public legal assistance as a fundamental social right institutionalized as a social policy and that its prediction, combined with the creation of the Public Defender's Office, presents itself as one of the dimensions of the Public Policy on Access to Rights. It addresses access to justice as a fundamental social right that integrates the content of basic human needs and transcends mere formal access to the Judiciary. It examines the main legislative acts responsible for the consolidation of the Public Defender's Office at the constitutional and infraconstitutional level. From the quantitative and qualitative data collected, he concluded that the expansion process of the Public Defender's Office has been permeated by political, legal and institutional conflicts; that the existing and provided positions are insufficient for the demand and for the capacity of public defenders in all counties in Maranhão within the period established by art. 98, of the Transitional Constitutional Provisions Act; that the budget for the implantation of new centers is below what is necessary; and that the criteria used for the allocation of public defenders do not meet the new constitutional model. Even so, other strategies for expanding care are being adopted, with a closer approach to the community and greater intervention in the public policy cycle.