Description
Aporophobia and Plutophilia: The Janus-faced drift of contemporary criminal policy
Book Summary
This work offers a critical and profound analysis of current criminal policy, revealing its two-faced nature. The author demonstrates how the penal system acts contradictorily: it is permissive and indulgent toward economic crimes and major corruption (plutophilia), while becoming severe and relentless with minor offenses committed by the most vulnerable groups, such as irregular immigrants (aporophobia). An essential essay for understanding the structural inequalities of contemporary criminal law.
What is it about?
The book examines criminal policy as a reflection of the neoliberal principles governing globalization. The author argues that, rather than being a unified system, criminal justice presents two opposite faces, like the god Janus. On one hand, there is a plutophilic tendency that favors the impunity of socioeconomic criminality: tax havens, amnesties, major political corruption, and pardons. On the other hand, an aporophobic response is deployed that criminalizes those excluded from the system, applying a "criminal law of the enemy" to minor offenses such as street vending or administrative irregularities. The work dismantles how these two seemingly contradictory directions are actually complementary within the same model of power.
Main Topics
- Analysis of aporophobia (fear/rejection of the poor) as a driver of criminal policy against the vulnerable.
- Study of plutophilia (indulgence toward the powerful) and its manifestation in the impunity of economic crimes.
- Critique of the "criminal law of the friend" and the "criminal law of the enemy" as two sides of the same coin.
- Evaluation of neoliberal deregulation and its impact on the selectivity of the penal system.
- Examination of the functionality of major corruption and tax havens within the lex mercatoria.
Who is it recommended for?
This book is intended for professionals and scholars of criminal law, criminology, and criminal policy. It will also be of great interest to sociologists, political scientists, and any reader committed to social justice who wishes to understand the structural contradictions of the contemporary punitive system.
What this book contributes
- An innovative interpretive key (the Janus metaphor) to decipher the duality of current criminal policy.
- A rigorous analysis of how economic power shapes the production and application of penal laws.
- A well-founded denunciation of the system's connivance with the criminality of the powerful.
- A clear explanation of why the crimes of the vulnerable receive disproportionate punishment.
- Conceptual tools for critically debating the selectivity of criminal law.
Technical Data
- Author: Terradillos Basoco, Juan María
- Publisher: J.M. BOSCH EDITOR
- Language: Spanish
- Topic: CRIME AND CRIMINOLOGY, INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW
- Collection: J.M. BOSCH EDITOR PENAL COLLECTION
- Binding: Paperback
- Edition Date: June 2020
- Number of pages: 192
- Weight: 350 g
Editorial Review
This is a reference work for those seeking a critical and well-argued reading on the paradoxes of criminal law in the neoliberal era. The author, with a solid and well-documented approach, manages to articulate complex concepts in an accessible way without losing academic rigor. Its main value lies in offering a perspective that connects political macroeconomics with the punitive micromanagement of poverty, making it especially relevant in the context of current debates on social justice and penal reform.