Continuing with the editorial program established for this new phase, we publish a second double issue, which should promptly be followed by a third, so that this Journal may be brought up to date and transition to its regular quarterly publication schedule.In this issue, we include a magnificent work by Professor L. H. C. Hulsman on decriminalization. This is the report presented by the eminent master at the Preparatory Colloquium of the XI International Congress of Penal Law, held in Bellagio in May 1973, concerning the first topic of this important conclave—the most suggestive and creative of them all. There is no doubt that the Criminal Law of our time faces a severe crisis stemming from the failure of classical means of penal repression, most notably custodial sentences, making a critical review of the entire theory of the legal consequences of crime imperative in order to adjust it to the demands of criminal policy. Along these lines (new methods and means), there emerges a need to revise criminalization criteria through a reexamination that ultimately touches upon the most critical problems of punitive law. The doctrinal section also features two additional works. One, by the director of this journal, addresses Genocide—a topic included in the new Penal Code that must now be studied in Brazil from a technical-legal perspective, discarding the somewhat literary tone with which some studies approach it. By Prof. Nilo Batista, under the modest title “Notes on Permanent Deformity,” we publish an exceptionally sound study that thoroughly exhausts the subject. In the Commentary and Communications section are two works. One, by Dr. Sérgio Demoro Hamilton—who is, without question, one of the most distinguished members of the Public Prosecution Office of Guanabara—on “The Adoption of the Principle of Mitigated Mandatory Prosecution in the Draft Code of Criminal Procedure”; and another by Dr. Laércio Pellegrino on Victimology, providing an accurate account of the 1st International Symposium on Victimology held in Jerusalem in September 1973, whose conclusions appear elsewhere in this issue. In the regular sections, the reader will find important information, bibliographic reviews, and case law presented in the informative and critical style we have adopted. The bibliographic review section will be greatly expanded in our upcoming editions, providing complete critical information on all national publications in our field. In the section on laws and draft bills, it is worth noting the publication—which we begin in this issue—of all materials relating to the drafting of the new Penal Code during this second and final (?) phase of its preparation. These are extremely important elements for the study of the new law. Heleno Cláudio Fragoso
Note: This text is an English translation of the original preface published in Portuguese in the Revista de Direito Penal.