THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE AND THE PROMOTION OF SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Abstract

In conformity with the constitutional imperative, the Public Prosecutor’s Office rightfully participates in the defense of unavailable social and individual interests. However, as a result of an eminently judicial and criminal predisposition of the Brazilian Public Prosecutor’s Office, particularly in the State of Sao Paulo4, during the mid-1990s, this defense has become, primarily, the object of judicial and individualized demands, whose practical outcome, when achieved, indicates little effectiveness, either due to the time for review and judgment by the Judicial Power, or to the social ineffectiveness of the projected verdict, which has even compromised the public value of the actions taken by the office. Accordingly, the present article aims to assess to which extent the intervention by the Prosecutor’s Office, playing the role of moderator between the civil society and the political system, even in the extrajudicial stage, but specially during the structuring process of the public agenda, is able to indeed preserve the tutelage of public goods, undeniably an object of unavailable social and individual interest, for which the parquet has a resolutive function5, rather than a solely demanding one, by fostering the exercise of social accountability and, consequently, increasing the institutional