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.

Ílison Dias Dos Santos is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona (Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2023–2024) and a collaborating professor in the Master's Program in Criminology, Criminal Policy, and Sociology of Criminal Law (2023–2024). Previously, he was a Gastwissenschaftler (postdoctoral fellow) at Humboldt University of Berlin (2022–2023). He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Salamanca (Summa Cum Laude with International Distinction, 2020), where he received the Extraordinary Doctorate Award. He has been awarded several research fellowships, which enabled him to undertake academic stays in Brazil, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Argentina.

He has contributed to interdisciplinary research projects across Europe and Latin America, focusing on criminology, criminal law, and criminal policy. He is the author of several academic articles and books, including The New Critical Criminology (with Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni) and Aporophobia and Punitive Power. He serves as the academic editor of the Ibero-American Criminal Sciences book series (Springer Nature) and the Reflexiones en Derecho Penal y Criminología book series (BdeF–Reus).

He served as president of the Center for Criminal Sciences at the Federal University of Bahia, where he is a founding member. He is affiliated with the Istituto di Studi Penalistici “Alimena” at the University of Calabria, serves on the editorial boards of specialized journals, and collaborates actively with scholars from various regions. He is fluent in multiple languages and regularly participates in international academic networks and conferences.