Prelims

Half Title Page

Punishment in Latin America

Series page

Perspectives on Crime, Law and Justice in the Global South

Series editors: Prof. Kerry Carrington and Prof. Máximo Sozzo

Scholarly perspectives on crime, law and justice have generally been sourced from a select number of countries from the Global North, whose journals, conferences, publishers and universities dominate the intellectual landscape. As a consequence, research about these matters in the Global South has tended to uncritically reproduce concepts and arguments developed in the Global North to understand local problems and processes. In recent times, there have been substantial efforts to uno this colonized way of thinking leading to a burgeoning body of new work. Southern theories, subaltern knowledges and border epistemologies are challenging the social science to open up new ways of thinking about society, crime, law and justice.

This book series aims to publish and promote innovative new scholarship with a long-term view of enhancing cognitive justice and democratizing the production of knowledge. Topics of interest from the perspective of the global south include – environmental and ecological plunder; gendered violence; religion, war and terror drug wars; the historical and contemporary legacies of slavery; the contemporary legacies of injustice arising from dispossession and colonialization; systems of punishment and forms of customary or transitional justice; human rights abuses and struggles for justice – all of which threaten the security of peoples who inhabit the global south.

Previous Volumes:

• Southern Green Criminology: A Science to End Ecological Discrimination

  Authored by David Rodríguez Goyes

• Transforming State Responses to Feminicide: Women’s Movements, Law and Criminal Justice Institutions in Brazil

  Authored by Fiona Macaulay

• Histories of Punishment and Social Control in Ireland: Perspectives from a Periphery

  Edited by Lynsey Black, Louise Brangan and Deirdre Healy

INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Elena Azaola Garrido	Centre for Study and Investigation Social Anthropology, Mexico
G. S. Bajpai	National Law University, India
Rosemary Barberet	John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA
Jarrett Blaustein	Monash University, Australia
Avi Brisman	University of Kentucky, USA
Meda Chesney-Lind	University of Hawaii, USA
Elliott Currie	University of California, USA
Patricia Faraldo Cabana	University of A Coruna, Spain
Kate Fitzgibbon	Monash University, Australia
Manuel Iturralde	Universidad de Andes, Colombia
Jianhong Liu	University of Macau, China
Vera Malaguti	State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Leon Moosavi	University of Liverpool, Singapore
Camila Prando	University of Brazil, Brazil
David Rodriguez Goyes	Antonio Nariño University, Colombia
Clifford Shearing	University of South Africa, South Africa
Chuen-Jim Sheu ()	National Taipei University, Hong Kong
Ragnhild Sollund	University of Oslo, Norway
Nigel South	University of Essex, UK
Richard Sparks	University of Edinburgh, UK
Elizabeth Stanley	Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Sandra Walklate	University of Liverpool, UK
Robert White	University of Tasmania, Australia
Eugenio R. Zaffaroni	University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Diego Zyman	University of Buenos Aries, Argentina

Title Page

Punishment in Latin America: Explorations from the Margins

EDITED BY

LUIZ DAL SANTO

University of Oxford, UK

AND

MÁXIMO SOZZO

National University of Litoral, Argentina

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.

First edition 2025

Editorial matter and selection © 2025 Luiz Dal Santo and Máximo Sozzo.

Individual chapters © 2025 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83797-329-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83797-328-6 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83797-330-9 (Epub)

Contents

About the Editors

Luiz Dal Santo is a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Centre for Criminology and a Tutor in Criminology at Hertford College and St Catherine’s College. He also teaches in Graduate Programs in Criminology and Law in Brazil. He previously taught at the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University, University of Law, and University of Roehampton. He has recently published a monograph titled A punição no Brasil: crítica do giro punitive (Tirant Lo Blanch, 2024) and co-edited the edited volume Southernising Criminology: Challenges, Horizons and Praxis (Routledge, 2024). He has also published journal articles and book chapters on punishment, penal populism, prison, police lethality, racism and criminal justice, Southern Criminology, and Criminal Law. His work has been published in English, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish.

Máximo Sozzo is a Professor of Sociology of Law and Criminology at the National University of Litoral (Argentina) and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the School of Law of the University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom) during 2024/2025. His research is focused on punishment and society in Latin America. His latest books are: Aliverti, H. Carvalho, A. Chamberlain, & M. Sozzo (Eds.) Decolonising the Criminal Question (Oxford University Press, 2023); M. Langer & M. Sozzo (Eds.) Justicia penal y mecanismos de condena sin juicio. Estudios sobre América Latina (Marcial Pons, 2023), and M. Sozzo (Ed.) Prisons, Inmates and Governance in Latin America (Palgrave, 2022).

About the Contributors

Martha Vargas Aguirre is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. A lawyer by training with a Master’s degree in Criminology, her research interests revolve around government practices in both criminal law and human mobility regulation, as well as the intersections between these two areas. A member of the academic commission of the Observatory of Criminology, Criminal Policy and Penal Execution of Ecuador, she develops constant evaluations in the area of criminal policy in this country as well as analysis of the use of these instruments as tools for the criminalization of immigration.

Andrés Antillano is Professor of Criminology at the Law School and Researcher at the Institute of Penal Sciences of the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He has written about prison, gangs, and crime.

Libardo José Ariza is a Lawyer from Universidad de los Andes. He holds a Master’s degree in Legal Sociology from the Oñati International Institute of Legal Philosophy and PhD in Law from the University of Deusto. He is currently a Professor at the Universidad de los Andes. His lines of research focus on the sociology of law, sociology of punishment, and prisons. His most recent publications are the book Tres décadas de encierro: el constitucionalismo liminal y la prisión en la era del populismo punitivo published by Siglo del Hombre Editores and the papers “Tales from La Catedral: The Narco and the Reconfiguration of Prison Social Order in Colombia” in the book Prisons, Inmates and Governance in Latin America and “Locked in the Home: A Critique of House Arrest as an Alternative to Imprisonment for Women Sentenced for Drug-Related Crimes” (2021) in The Prison Journal.

André R. Giamberardino is Professor of the Postgraduate Programs in Law and Sociology of the Federal University of Paranà (UFPR) and Public Defender of the Public Defender’s Office of Paraná, Brazil. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Italy (2024). Previously, he was Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School (2019–2020) and Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Public Security of Brazil (2018). He received his PhD in Law from UFPR (2014), and his Master’s degree in Law from UFPR (2007) and in Criminology from the Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy (2009). His research and publications focus on prison, punishment, and criminal justice topics. He has recently published the books Penal Abolitionism and Transformative Justice in Brazil (Routledge, 2023), Sociocriminologia, and Comentários à Lei de Execução Penal (in Portuguese).

Claudio González Guarda holds a PhD in Law and Social Sciences from the University of Malaga, Spain. He also works as assistant professor in the Faculty of Government at the University of Chile and is currently the director of the Centro de Estudios en Seguridad Ciudadana (CESC) at the same university. Dr. Gonzalez is also currently president of the Chilean Society of Criminology.

Olga Espinoza M. is a Professor at the Faculty of Government at the University of Chile. She holds a PhD in Social Science from the University of Chile, and a Master’s degree in Law from the University of Sao Paulo. She is a founder member of the Chilean Society of Criminology (SoChiCrim). Her research and publications are focused on prison policies, female prisoners, and criminal justice topics.

Mariano Sicardi is a PhD student at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. He holds a BA in Law (Faculty of Law, UBA) and an MA in Criminology (Faculty of Law & Social Sciences, National University of Litoral). Currently, he serves as jefe de trabajos prácticos at the UNPaz School of Law (Argentina).

Santiago Sosa Barón is a Sociologist and has a Postgraduate Diploma in Public Policies, Crime and Insecurity (University of the Republic). He is a Master’s student in Human Sciences and Contemporary Philosophy. He is an Advisor at the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Prisons in Uruguay, where he works in the area of statistics and monitoring, helping to verify compliance with human rights in Uruguayan prisons. He works on research on prison policies and the development of tools to address human rights violations. He has participated in several research projects on living conditions, rehabilitation opportunities, institutional violence, and deaths in custody, among other aspects of the prison system. He has also worked as a consultant at the Social Security Institute, researching various aspects of the social security system in Uruguay.

Fernando León Tamayo Arboleda is a Lawyer from Universidad de Antioquia. He holds a Master’s degree in Criminal Law from Universidad Eafit and PhD in Law from Universidad de los Andes. He is currently a Professor at the Universidad de los Andes. His lines of research focus on criminology, sociology of law, sociology of punishment, and criminal law. His most recent publications are the book Del Estado al parque: el gobierno del crimen en las ciudades contemporáneas published by Siglo del Hombre Editores; and the papers “Understanding Contradictory Styles of Punishment” in Theoretical Criminology, “Urban Surveillance and Crime Governance in Bogotá” in City, Culture and Society; and “Building a Secure City: Urban Governance, Crime Control and Segregation in Bogotá” (2022) in City.

Diego Tuesta is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. His dissertation examines the relationship between prosecutorial discretion and racial disparities in the province of Ontario, Canada. He has conducted multiple qualitative research projects that investigate prosecutorial discretion and police governance in cases of femicide, human trafficking and mining protests in his native Peru. Before his Doctoral studies, he worked as an advisor, consultant and data analyst for criminal justice agencies in Peru, as well as civil society organizations both nationally and internationally. He has been a Course Instructor of criminology courses at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Universidad del Pacífico. Currently, in addition to his academic work, he often participates as an expert witness for asylum-related cases in the United States.

Valeria Vegh Weis, LLM (NYU), PhD (UBA), is a Research Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg of the University of Konstanz, where she researches the role of human rights and victims’ organizations in confronting state crimes in the Global South. She is also an Associate Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, and Universidad Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. She has held several fellowships, including the Alexander von Humboldt, Fulbright and Hauser Global. Her book Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity (Brill, 2017; Haymarket Books, 2018) won the Choice Award and the Outstanding Book Award. She is also co-author of Lawfare: The Criminalisation of Politics in the Global South (2023) and Editor of Criminalisation of Activism (2021). She has 15 years’ of experience in criminal courts and international organizations and is the winner of the ASC Critical Criminology of the Year Award (2021).

Ana Vigna is a Professor at the School of Social Sciences, University of the Republic (Uruguay), and holds a PhD in Sociology (University of the Republic). She has worked on several research projects on prison policy, desistance from crime, recidivism, punishment, and gender and crime. She has written several articles and contributed to books on the subject. She has also worked as a consultant for various national and international agencies on issues such as prison reform, prison ombudsman, and gender in the criminal justice system.