Aporophobia and Punitive Power in Brazil

This book provides a critical and reflective analysis of the criminological movement to establish aporophobia as a framework for examining punitive power. It scrutinizes the theoretical, methodological, and political foundations of aporophobia, a concept developed in a distinct sociopolitical reality and reveals the risks of uncritically applying it to Brazil's context. It highlights how aporophobia fails to account for the central role of Brazil s history of slavery in shaping its abysmal penal selectivity, which disproportionately targets marginalized groups perceived as social pariahs. By obscuring these structural roots, this movement inadvertently legitimizes Brazil s unchecked punitive power, perpetuating the belief in criminal law as a solution to deeply embedded social issues ultimately reinforcing what is identified as a criminology of blindness that ignores the roots of the abysmal selectivity of punitive power in Brazil.

Rooted in critical criminology, the book highlights the limitations of aporophobia as a critical-criminological tool and proposes an alternative framework grounded in intersectionality and Southern epistemologies. These perspectives emphasize the importance of delegitimizing criminal law as a mechanism for addressing social inequalities while constructing a more realistic and emancipatory critique of punitive power. 

It also exposes the criminal policy of the other , a caste-based model that erodes the rule of law, even under the punitive new left. Ultimately, the work calls for a criminological approach that engages directly with Brazil s historical and systemic inequalities, offering a globally informed yet locally grounded analysis of the selective exercise of punitive power.