This article addresses the racism ingrained in Brazilian society since its beginnings, primarily with the genocide of the indigenous population in Colonial Brazil, who were subsequently replaced by the black population forcibly brought from Africa to be enslaved. This is the reason why contemporary Brazilian society exhibits structural racism, a phenomenon that reverberates in daily life, notably in public institutions responsible for formal social control, specifically the Military Police in the process of police stops, exhibiting selectivity in behaviors considered suspicious depending on the individual being approached. This fact will be demonstrated through cases that occurred in Bahia. This article explores themes of paramount social and legal importance, such as racism in Brazil, criminal law and social control, based on the American labeling approach theory and aspects of critical criminology, in addition to considerations about public security institutions provided for in the Federal Constitution, complementing with the dual function of the Military Police and its selective action in the State of Bahia. Furthermore, the research includes data that proves the condition of black people in socially subordinate positions, whether due to the illiteracy rate or the minority occupation of management/director positions, a consequence of Brazilian structural racism. The attached data also proves that the black population is the one that suffers the most deaths at the hands of the Military Police in Bahia, through police stops that result in summary executions, given the high use of lethal force by the aforementioned institution.

This article analyzes the production of Copaganda in Brazil, seen as police propaganda to build an image or promote its objectives in light of critical criminology. The focus is on a post on Instagram by the 9th Special Police Action Battalion (BAEP) of São José do Rio Preto, which generated controversy for containing symbols associated with white supremacism, such as a burning cross and a raised arm gesture. The research problem questions which discourses-images were propagated by the post and how its media repercussion occurred. The objective is to identify the rhetoric and images involved and their implications. The methodology is deductive, with critical discourse analysis and bibliographic review. It is concluded that the advertising piece mobilizes symbolic elements historically linked to racism and fascism, revealing how Copaganda can serve to normalize violence and authoritarian discourses as a solution to crime. The resistance of the authorities to recognize the symbolic nature of the content reflects the maintenance of racist structures in the public security apparatus. Therefore, we warn against the use of Copaganda, also algorithmically fed via social networks, as a tool for regulating violence, thus consolidating the state racism already perpetrated against the country's black population. Key words: Copaganda; critical criminology; police; media and social network; white supremacism.

This article investigates how China's smart drug-control systems, an emerging representation of digital platforms designed for community-based drug rehabilitation, reproduce and amplify structural violence, imposing punishment under the guise of improving the effectiveness of rehabilitation. Drawing on observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in three mainland Chinese cities, we identify three forms of violence embedded in the digital rehabilitation: labelling violence , which reduces complex individuals to algorithmically produced risk scores; silent violence , which recodes emotional withdrawal or digital non-participation as non-compliance; and classification violence , which repurposes recovery as a tool for state-led stability maintenance. These findings advance critical criminology and digital governance studies by demonstrating how digital technologies, overclaiming the balance of rehabilitation rationality and administrative efficiency, transform rehabilitative care into a mechanism of biopolitical control. Ultimately, we argue that digitalisation in rehabilitation does not necessarily signify progress or inclusion; rather, it often obscures and intensifies inequalities in new, technocratic forms. Research and policy implications of this study are also addressed.

This article critically examines the legislative process that culminated in the enactment of Brazil’s Environmental Crimes Law, with particular attention to how criminal law is mobilized to protect collective legal interests. To situate the analysis, the discussion begins with an overview of the development of the legally protected interests theory, emphasizing its relevance to the recognition of diffuse and collective interests such as the environment. Methodologically, the study relies on legislative document analysis and bibliographic review, while drawing on theoretical perspectives from critical criminology and critical legal dogmatics. The article argues that theoretical elaborations surrounding the notion of legally protected interests did not hinder legislative progress. Rather, the legislature’s decision to criminalize environmental harm functioned as a political gesture—one that deliberately distanced itself from academic debate in favor of reinforcing the public perception that criminalization guarantees protection.

Abstract This paper seeks to advance a critical criminology of artificial intelligence (AI) by exploring how AI technologies function as mechanisms of systemic harm under late capitalism. Moving beyond sensationalist concerns regarding malicious actors utilising AI for nefarious purposes, we interrogate how AI reconfigures labour, governance, and social control in ways that intensify inequality and erode worker autonomy. Drawing from ultra-realism, zemiology, and social harm theory, we introduce a new typology of AI-related harms: Datafication, Algorithmic Governance, Operational , and Existential harms. These categories reveal how AI operates not as a neutral tool but as a mechanism of pseudo-pacification that consolidates elite power while masking deepening exploitation. Through a thematic analysis of 224 sources, we demonstrate that AI’s telos—its intended good—has been corrupted by the capitalist logic of efficiency and control. We argue that criminology must urgently engage with AI’s embedded harms to remain fit for purpose in an increasingly automated world.

ABSTRACT This article develops hauntology as a central lens to understand deviance among young migrants who arrived in Italy as unaccompanied minors. Based on qualitative narrative interviews, the study analyzes how fractured temporalities, spectral returns, and foreclosed futures constrain identity formation and render crime a narratively available response. Rather than treating deviance as a rational choice or reactive behavior, it is framed as a haunted enactment – arising as one contingent response within disrupted chronotopes where biographical progression is suspended. While supported by selected concepts from narrative identity and critical criminology, the analysis centrally builds on hauntology to map how temporal and spatial dislocations shape the affective and symbolic logic of criminal behavior. Findings suggest that policy responses must address not only structural marginalization, but also the disrupted narrative conditions that prevent migrants from constructing coherent future selves. This requires long-term stability, legal recognition, and the restoration of livable, forward-oriented temporalities.

In an era marked by the escalating globalisation of crime, the import of Southern criminology has progressively transitioned from a marginalised field to a central focus in research.[1] This transition presents theoretical challenges to criminology in the Northern Hemisphere.[2] This essay posits that while Southern criminology challenges Northern criminology’s hegemony, these challenges are ultimately overstated. Recognising and addressing these challenges is imperative for improving the epistemological framework and theoretical contributions of criminology, thereby equipping it to confront 21st-century criminal phenomena more effectively. [1] Matthews, Roger. “False Starts, Wrong Turns and Dead Ends: Reflections on Recent Developments in Criminology.” Critical Criminology 25, no. 4 (2017): 577-591. [2] Greenberg, David F. “The Weak Strength of Social Control Theory.” Crime & Delinquency 45, no. 1 (1999): 66–81.

ABSTRACTI call on geographers and other social scientists, including critical criminologists, to continue theorizing crime as a relational concept shaped by political narratives and politicized perceptions of place. Building on the literature in geography, I propose a relational ontology of crime—viewing it not as a fixed set of illicit acts, incidents of victimization, or violations of legal code, but as a political concept that influences how people and places are imagined. By shifting focus from crime as events to crime as an ontological category, scholars can better understand its role in advancing ideological perceptions of place, the incitement of fear, and uninformed calls for social control and increased criminalization.

This article examines the governance of digital sex work and online sexual content through the lenses of critical criminology, critical security studies, and digital labour studies. Focusing on key legislative frameworks – including SESTA/FOSTA (US), the UK Online Safety Act, and the EU Digital Services Act – it demonstrates how policies ostensibly designed to combat trafficking and protect children instead expand surveillance, financial exclusion, and algorithmic governance, exacerbating the marginalisation and criminalisation of sex workers. Rooted in ‘creeping neo-abolitionism’, these laws function as carceral digital governance, reinforcing exclusion through automated content moderation, biometric tracking, and platform policing rather than providing meaningful protections. Digital harms, whether stemming from AI-generated pornography or platform regulation, are fundamentally labour issues that cannot be addressed through punitive, carceral frameworks. Instead, this article advocates for a shift toward harm reduction, community-led interventions, and policies that uphold sexual autonomy and labour rights. At the same time, technology is not solely a tool of repression; it also enables networks of care, digital solidarity, and alternative infrastructures for sex worker resistance. A radical reconfiguration of ‘online safety’ is essential: one that challenges dominant legal and technological apparatuses and centres sex workers’ agency and expertise.

The Irritation of Doubt: Pragmatism and Critical Criminology

The issue of the Rancangan Undang-Undang Masyarakat Hukum Adat (RUU MHA)—Indigenous Peoples’ Draft Law—not yet being enacted in Indonesia has raised concerns among indigenous communities about the unclear legal protection of their customary land and forests. This situation has the potential to lead to human rights violations and other problems that could result in economic and social losses for them. Moreover, the ambiguous regulation of living law within the Indonesian Criminal Code (KUHP) complicates the ability of indigenous communities to implement their traditional laws. This study aims to analyze the management of the Baduy customary forest within the context of customary law and state law, as well as its implications for protecting indigenous peoples’ rights. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, data were collected through field observations, in-depth interviews, and document studies related to the management of customary territories and the protection of indigenous communities. The findings indicate that the Baduy people, particularly the Baduy Dalam, independently manage their customary forest areas based on indigenous values and living traditions. This management acts as a form of living law that effectively preserves the forest and mitigates external disturbances. By applying the theories of Living Law and Critical Criminology, this study reveals that customary law functions as a social protection mechanism amid the ambiguity of formal law. However, the lack of strong recognition of state law creates vulnerabilities to human rights violations and environmental crimes. This study recommends enhancing legal recognition and protection of customary territories to ensure the rights of the Baduy people and to prevent illegal exploitation.

Contemporary criminological knowledge is under siege by new techniques of social control. Additionally, Critical Criminology has failed to escape the impasse imposed by critiques from both left and right realism, which have labeled it as unfeasible in practice. This article aims to unveil current forms of power in order to lay the groundwork for a renewed criminological critique. As both metaphor and methodology, two episodes of the series Black Mirror are used to illustrate the possible implications of the transparency society on deviance and crime. In conclusion, the article outlines a sketch of what should converge into a Critical Criminology envisioned from the Global South.

Abstract This is a post-humanist exploration into the quantum ontology of entanglement as a force that moves through prisons and their occupants. It postulates that quantum entanglement is the prime cause of affective energy transmission. It investigates quantum entanglement in sites of traumatic contamination and queries whether emotional residue is in fact, entangled particles left by traumatised people. It explores ideas around lived experience, quantum mechanics, affect and emotional residues, sympathetic magic, critical criminology and transformative criminology. Ultimately it questions the treatment of our most marginalised and postulates that criminology needs to work harder to ensure better outcomes for people at the mercy of our current systems of justice.

Critical criminology has a long history of examining a legion of interpersonal violent acts committed in public and private contexts, crimes of the powerful, and a myriad of other harms typically exempt from the purview of orthodox criminologists. However, until recently, exhaustive scholarly work on the “dark side” of sport was conspicuously absent from the dynamic critical criminological project. This article chronicles key historical and contemporary contributions to the critical criminology of sport and suggests new directions in theory and research.

This interview introduces green criminology as a vital approach to the study of crime, victimization and its control. It brings together two established scholars, Anna Di Ronco and Nigel South, who share their views on a range of topics, from personal reasons for engaging in green criminology and its position of green criminology in mainstream and critical criminology, to the different forms of green criminology (political economy versus cultural approaches), and possible solutions to green crimes and harms. The interview concludes with their thoughts on the public role of criminologists today.

In the realm of criminology, there are several schools that have different opinions on criminology. In addition to the Juridical (Law) stream, there is a non-Juridical school which is better known as the Sociological school. One scholar of the Sociological stream, Thorsten Sellin, as quoted by Topo Santoso, argued that a better basis for the development of scientific categories is to provide a better basis by studying conduct norms, because the concept of behavioral norms which includes every group or institution such as the state and is the creation of any normative groups, and is not confined by political boundaries and does not always have to be contained in law. The critical criminology approach is more comprehensive than the classical approach which places more emphasis on juridical aspects. A critical approach that covers the root causes of crime and involves authorities such as labor owners is seen as having relevance in overcoming crime (corruption) in Indonesia.

Creative, emancipatory pedagogies have the power and potential to enhance teaching and learning while also subverting restrictive features of traditional prison education. Through presenting the findings from two prison based criminology classrooms in Cork, Ireland and Belfast, Northern Ireland, this paper argues that using cross disciplinary, creative pedagogies can enhance a “critical criminology” curriculum and bring abstract concepts to life in restricted classroom contexts. These classrooms, joined together under the HEA funded North South Together (“Together”) participatory action research project, centred lived experience, reflective learning and dialogic learning to foster a convivial environment for university based students to study alongside classmates in prison. The application of creative practices in the classrooms subvert the “hidden curriculum” (Jackson, 1968) of traditional prison and university education spaces through encouraging students to bring in their lived experience, sensory reflections, and mutual learning. Through creative group work projects, students co-produced artefacts that represented the theories and concepts studied throughout the semester. This paper analyses two pieces of artwork: a paper mache volcano that represents the pains of incarceration and social control and collage artwork that represents sigma, labelling, and person centred language. The analysis of these artefacts revealed three key elements of creative teaching and learning: (a) putting into practice 'emancipatory pedagogy’ within challenging constraints of prison education classrooms, which allows abstract criminological concepts to come to life (b) producing civic space through the practice of conviviality and generativity across diverse learner groups and across institutions (c) subverting the the “hidden curriculum” of contemporary social science and prison education classrooms.

Background: The increasing prevalence of illegal online lending (pinjol) in Indonesia has raised concerns regarding its impact on students. Despite their status as educated individuals, many students face financial hardships that push them to seek alternative financial solutions, including illegal online loans. This research explores the factors leading students to use illegal online loans, the victimization process, and the long-term consequences on their academic and financial well-being. Methods: This study employs a qualitative research approach using a critical criminology framework to analyze the structural factors contributing to student victimization. Data were collected through structured interviews with seven students from different universities in Indonesia, all of whom had firsthand experience as illegal online loan users. Findings: Many students refrain from reporting their cases due to fear of social stigma, legal repercussions, and the perception that authorities may not take their complaints seriously. Students face financial strain due to tuition fees, living expenses, and societal expectations to be independent. Many are forced to seek quick financial solutions, leading them to illegal lending platforms. Victims often face intimidation and threats from debt collectors, including exposure of personal information. Conclusions: Illegal online loans create significant financial, psychological, and academic challenges for students. The exploitative nature of these loans exacerbates existing economic inequalities, forcing students into cycles of debt and distress. Novelty/Originality of this Article: This study offers a new perspective on the role of financial stress and social expectations in student involvement with illegal online lending. Unlike previous research that focuses solely on digital lending regulation, this study examines the personal experiences of student borrowers and the structural factors contributing to their financial victimization. The findings provide valuable insights for policymakers, financial institutions, and educators in developing preventive strategies to reduce student dependency on illegal online loans.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I engage in a critical rhetorical analysis of the discourse surrounding a police raid of the Idaho Harm Reduction Project (IHRP). I start from critical criminology’s assumption that police power is fundamental to constructing social order. Examining the rhetorical tool of stigma, I explore how the discourse about drug use following the IHRP raid serves to perpetuate the stigma around substance users. I argue this rhetoric aligns with the cultural artifact of the thin blue line, portraying drug use as at odds with social order and envisioning drug use as an abstracted enemy attacking civilization. Then, I point to two distinct but interrelated impacts to this discourse—the relegation of the stigmatized to the outside of social order and the creation of circumstances wherein treatment is less likely. Through this analysis, I show how stigma is utilized as a technology of social order, and how police power used that technology in their construction of order.

This paper examines critical issues that arose during an innovative educational initiative directed at inmate students, offering both a reflective analysis of prison living conditions and the acquisition of methodological tools useful for prison research. With a particular focus on the potential and challenges of developing prison-based projects within the framework of Convict Criminology, the author employs an auto-ethnographic narrative to illuminate the theoretical and methodological difficulties encountered by participants. Specifically, this work problematizes the internalization of the prison’s institutional culture as it hinders the development of the cultural and political awareness necessary to analyse prison through a critical perspective.