An Overview Of Criminology In Latin America

An Overview Of Criminology In Latin America Presented by: Prof. Iturralde Date: 12 July 2024 Index - The Latin American context - A Latin American Criminology? - • Latin American Critical Criminology (1970s) • Towards a Southern Criminology Possible topics of research The Latin American Context Some Basic Facts - Latin America is the most unequal region in the world. - It features the highest levels of violence and criminality worldwide. - Social perception of insecurity and distrust towards fellow citizens and the state are high. - States with low levels of legitimacy react in punitive ways. - Excessive and lethal use of force by security agencies. - High and increasing imprisonment rates. - The average imprisonment rate was 97 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants in 1990 in 2020 it reached 272-a 180% increase. - By 2017, Central and South America were the two sub regions with the highest rates of intentional homicides in the world, with rates of 25.9 and 24.2 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively, more than three times the global average - South America and Central America have the highest levels of reported physical assaults and violent robberies in the world (426.28 and 364.84 robberies per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively, while the average in Western Europe is 226.60) - Latin America's population represents 8% of the world's population, yet it is victim of 33% of the world's homicides. A Latin American Criminology? Latin American Critical Criminology (1970s) - Contradicted the paradigms produced in the hegemonic North - "Need of a criminology for Latin America by Latin Americans." - Critique of practices of social control. Not to control crime but to keep in check the excluded. - Reaction against positivist criminology introduced in the 1880s. - Critique of imported criminologist as legitimating devices of the elites to control the 'unrolling' populations. - Critique of traditional criminology's modernization/development approach. - Influence of continental Europe social theories. Frankfurt School, Foucault, Melossi and Pavarini, Baratta. Towards a Southern Criminology - The magnitude and impact of violence and crime in the region from the 1990s onwards have sparked the interest of social researchers, politicians and public opinion, placing the real and perceived problems of crime and violence at the top of the political agenda and public debates. - A profuse and expanding literature on violence and crime, on the one hand, and crime control, on the other, has developed from different social sciences perspectives. - Unlike other parts of the world, such literature has not grown within a specific academic discipline, such as Criminology. In some Latin American countries, Criminology has made institutional progress, though it is still at its first stages. - Much of the research on crime and crime control has been addressed from different academic disciplines, such as Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, Social Communication and Cultural Studies, and Economics, among others. - All these disciplines have also been the product of a relatively recent institutionalization process, from the second half of the Twentieth century, within Latin American academic fields. - It is complex to map a multidimensional field of social research on crime and crime control in the region during the last decades. There is a vast and varied production of knowledge on crime and crime control in Latin America. - There are no consolidated and institutionalized disciplines, such as Criminology, that systematically discuss these subjects. This kind of knowledge and research on these topics in the region have come from different, unarticulated academic disciplines and perspectives. - Traditional and robust tendency of Latin American researchers to concentrate on their national contexts. Limited number of comparative studies between Latin American countries. - Difficulties to confront and to dialogue about these subjects in order to construct comparative narratives that encompass the whole region, or at least a significant number of the countries that comprise it. - Recent debates on the decolonization of Criminology have prompted the call for a Southern Criminology with its own GS research agendas, theories and scholars (Carrington et al. 2016, 2018, 2019; Carrington and Hogg 2017). This move includes Latin America. - Debate on Southern Criminology's agenda: • Decolonization viewed as primary epistemological (transformation of systems of knowledge production and power relations). • Reification of Southern traditional responses to crime (i.e. indigenous and restorative justice). • Critical analysis of current structures on neo- colonization (Empire as a living structure, not a repique from the past). - Empire as a global system of capitalist accumulation founded on the colonial matrix of inequality, appropriation, dispossession, and exploitation through violent means (Ciocchini and Greener 2021). Possible Topics Of Research For The Criminological Analyses Of Neo- Colonization In Global South Contexts Possible Topics Of Research - State-corporate 'regimes of permission' (extreme systems of exploitation and dispossession). - Gender violence and gendered economics (expansion of markets and forms of hierarchical and sociocultural (gender) oppression. - Racialized and class-based criminalization regimes (security, policing and prisons focused on the 'enemy within'/the 'unrolling classes', the 'undeserving poor'). - The growth of the penal state/Historical trajectories.