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In this paper, I will analyze the metamorphosis of penal policy during the process of democratization of the last three decades in Argentina. The beginning of the transition was characterized by an elitist, formalist, and expert-driven mode of penal policy-making that produced several initiatives towards penal moderation. In this context, a certain contraction of punitiveness was produced. This pattern changed in the 1990s. In the context of the extreme neoliberal reforms, some initiatives had emerged oriented towards the increase of penal severity and extension, in an ambivalent landscape. But in the second half of this decade, penal populism emerged “from above” as a reaction of the elites that changed radically the mode of penal policy-making and fueled a great growth of punitiveness. After the crisis of 2001, there was a new wave of penal populism “from below” supported by strong social mobilizations around the figure of the victim. This radical mutation of the mode and orientation of penal policy-making generated an image of an epochal change that seemed to set up a new relationship between penalty and democracy. However, in the mid-2000s some symptoms of blockage of penal populism started to appear, creating tensions and contradictions still present today.

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<span>En este trabajo se analizan las transformaciones actuales de la institución penitenciaria en la Argentina tomando como escenarios privilegiados de observación los contextos de la Provincia de Buenos Aires y Santa Fe y el Servicio Penitenciario Federal. Se explora en detalle el crecimiento de los volúmenes de encarcelamiento, el porcentaje de presos sin condena, la superpoblación, el hacinamiento, las condiciones de vida inhumanas y el ejercicio de la violencia. A partir de esta información empírica se plantea una discusión de la lectura de las trasformaciones contemporáneas de la prisión en términos del pasaje de aquel viejo modelo normalizador, a un modelo de la “prisión-jaula” o “prisión-depósito”</span>

Women’s police stations are a distinctive innovation that emerged in postcolonial nations of the global south in the second half of the twentieth century to address violence against women. This article presents the results of a world-first study of the unique way that these stations, called Comisaría de la Mujer, prevent gender-based violence in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. One in five police stations in this Province was established with a mandate of preventing gender violence. Little is currently known about how this distinctive multidisciplinary model of policing (which includes social workers, lawyers, psychologists and police) widens access to justice to prevent gender violence. This article compares the model’s virtues and limitations to traditional policing models. We conclude that specialised women’s police stations in the postcolonial societies of the global south increase access to justice, empower women to liberate themselves from the subjection of domestic violence and prevent gender violence by challenging patriarchal norms that sustain it. As a by-product, these women’s police stations also offer women in the global south a career in law enforcement—one that is based on a gender perspective. The study is framed by southern criminology, which reverses the notion that ideas, policies and theories can only travel from the anglophone world of the global north to the global south.

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