Policing and Punishment in Global Perspective

During the 1970s, state crimes were configured as the central object of human rights’ complaints in Latin America, such as arbitrary political prisons and the practice of tortures against political opponents. With the democratization process, the meaning of state crimes changed progressively to signify other types of violence, such as police violence or the violence against prisoners. As human rights agenda expanded to include a huge array of situations, the State lost its centrality as the most important perpetrator. Civilians, social organizations and enterprises emerged alongside the State as the responsible of human rights’ violations. Nonetheless, and despite the installation of democratic regimes, we are witnessing in some countries an increase of certain violent actions related to the State, which reveals a new social complexity and represents an important challenge to legal democracies. This session welcomes papers that deal with this ambiguous reality, where the distinction legal/illegal loses the capacity to describe and to understand current violent dynamics and the role played by the State.