The emergency of the global criminal field: deconstructing modern criminal law

Abstract

In adhering to the paradigmatic orientation of political sociology in the criminal field, this work aims to examine the mechanisms that harness ‘global threats” to structure the global criminal field and to deconstruct modern criminal law on local scales. Such simultaneous processes base their predominantly repressive strands of logic on the solidarities between neoliberal democracies and totalitarianisms, which effectively defines the contours of the late modernity characteristic of the criminal sphere in the twenty-first century. The social sciences of law are faced with the urgent task of studying criminal deviations to have manifested both on a global and local scale, in order to examine the degree to which penal democracies are sustainable. An epistemological leap is required for the constitution of a new ecology of penal knowledge, guaranteeing the humanizing of the criminal field.