Emerald Studies in Activist Criminology – serie

This volume contains two Open Access Chapters.Gender, Criminalization, Imprisonment and Human Rights in Southeast Asia features contributions from activist scholars grappling to understand and alleviate the compound sufferings of women and LGBTIQA+ persons as they encounter Southeast Asian criminal justice systems. The collection demonstrates that it is critical that the drivers of gendered harms and the way gendered needs intersect with other inequalities are better understood and adequately reflected in law, policy and practice.

This volume contains two Open Access Chapters.Gender, Criminalization, Imprisonment and Human Rights in Southeast Asia features contributions from activist scholars grappling to understand and alleviate the compound sufferings of women and LGBTIQA+ persons as they encounter Southeast Asian criminal justice systems. The collection demonstrates that it is critical that the drivers of gendered harms and the way gendered needs intersect with other inequalities are better understood and adequately reflected in law, policy and practice.

Although intervention and campaigning have long been integral to critical criminology, in recent years, criminal justice activism has taken new directions and gathered momentum, especially with the advent of digital technologies and social media. These have made it easier than ever for ordinary citizens and professional journalists alike to comment on perceived injustices and potentially intervene in formal criminal justice processes. The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology examines the history of both recent and more established justice campaigns and interventions. Spanning contributions from activists, activist academics, and practitioners from five continents, chapters address a range of criminological perspectives that engage in questions of effecting change through activism. Contributors also consider prominent international issues including feminist criminology, juvenile justice, migrant rights, corporate and state crime, indigenous rights, green/environmental criminology, sentencing and wrongful conviction, the harms of prisons, corrections and abolitionism, and justice for victim/survivors of harm and crime.Collectively, The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology explores the contemporary terrain around new and emergent issues and forms of activism, and offers cutting edge conceptualizations of the methodological and practical applications of activist engagement, solidarity, and resistance.

In the realm of criminal law, critical criminology has set itself apart by challenging the field’s role as a pillar sustaining capitalist order. Ideology and Punishment applies the Marxist concept of ideology to scrutinise the foundations of modern criminal law, exposing its function in reinforcing social hierarchies and maintaining inequalities. It argues for the necessity of social transformation, laying the groundwork for an activist criminology. By critiquing the colonised reproduction of Global North perspectives on punishment, the concept of ideology urges scholars to construct an independent framework rooted in the lived realities of punishment in the Global South. This study examines how foundational principles of modern criminal law—developed by German legal scholars since the 18th century—have shaped the civil law tradition and been uncritically reproduced in Latin America. Drawing on contemporary critical traditions—including critical criminology, penal abolitionism, and southern and activist criminology—Cacicedo advocates for an activist criminology built on a materialist understanding of ideology. Offering a fresh approach, Ideology and Punishment positions critical criminology in two underexplored roles: as a critique of modern criminal law and as a foundation for activist criminology—both stemming from the materialist concept of ideology. Patrick Cacicedo presents a compelling challenge to the existing order and envisions its transformation.