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Transformations of the Crime Control Field in Colombia

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The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South

Abstract

During the last three decades, the governments of different countries globally have adopted authoritarian policies to confront criminal phenomena, which they regard as particularly dangerous (such as terrorism and narco-trafficking). Governments’ actions and policies have consolidated a penal culture whereupon order and security are invoked not only to limit human rights but also to push economic and social justice into the background. Thus, order and security are regarded as a precondition for economic development and social welfare. Often, analyses coming from the global North do not consider such particularities when assessing complex global phenomena. This chapter discusses the transformations that the Colombian crime control field has experienced during the last three decades, where context-specific phenomena have contributed to the expansion and consolidation of a repressive and exclusionary penal culture.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jayasuriya uses the term ‘Authoritarian Liberalism’ in a different context, to refer to a post-war form of economic governance, particularly in East Asia, which enables the emergence of the regulatory state—a strong state the purpose of which is to safeguard and regulate a liberal market economy (2000: 318, 319). Cristi also uses this term to explain Carl Schmitt’s authoritarian conception of the state, according to which a strong state is a precondition for a free economy (1998: 4, footnote 6, 175).

  2. 2.

    According to Dezalay and Garth (2002: XV), the Washington consensus is ‘a phrase developed in 1990 to suggest that the US government and the multilateral organizations in Washington had come to an agreement on what kind of state and economy would be appropriate in Latin America’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Law Department, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

    Libardo José Ariza & Manuel Iturralde

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  1. Libardo José Ariza
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  2. Manuel Iturralde
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Kerry Carrington

  2. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Russell Hogg

  3. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    John Scott

  4. National University of Litoral Santa Fe, Santa Fe, Argentina

    Máximo Sozzo

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Ariza, L.J., Iturralde, M. (2018). Transformations of the Crime Control Field in Colombia. In: Carrington, K., Hogg, R., Scott, J., Sozzo, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65021-0_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65021-0_33

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