5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The session engages with he concept of 'southern' xcriminology and justice. Sociology and criminology – as a theoretical and empirical projects – have historically largely overlooked the distinctive contributions from and about the global South. The purpose of this session is to promote the global south as both a space to produce knowledge and as a source of innovative research and theory on crime and justice. The global South, and its forms of economic and political life, do not exist apart from the historical, highly unequal pattern of relationships with imperial countries of the global north, shaped by the historical legacies of Empire. These patterns of expropriation, exploitation and forced migration have left enduring imprints on colonial settler societies, whether they happen to be in the north or the south and whether they are GDP-rich or not. The impacts of colonisation live on in contemporary patterns of crime and violence, armed conflict, organised crime, gang wars, practices of punishment and policing in settings where state agencies are often too weak, indifferent, or corrupt to provide security for their citizens or, worse, are themselves directly complicit in genocidal violence, extra-judicial killings and other systematic human rights abuses, themes explored in this session.