Criminalization of Activism

Valeria Vegh Weis is an Argentinean/German Criminologist and Criminal Lawyer. She teaches Criminology and Transitional Justice at Buenos Aires University, UBA, and National Quilmes University (Argentina) as well as State Crime in Nazi Germany at Freie Universität Berlin (Germany). She is currently a Research Fellow at the Zukunftkolleg at Universität Konstanz, where she researches on the role of human rights and victims’ organizations in resistance to state crime. She is also an Associate Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, where she directs the research group on Transnational Criminal Law in Transatlantic Perspective (1870–1945) together with Prof. Dr. Karl Härter. Vegh Weis holds a Ph.D. in Law and an LL.M. in Criminal Law from UBA and an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from New York University. She has held different fellowships including the Alexander von Humboldt (Germany), the Fulbright and the Hauser Global (USA). Her first book Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity (BRILL 2017, Haymarket Books 2018) was awarded the Choice Award by the American Library Association and the Outstanding Book Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. She is also the co-author of Bienvenidos al Lawfare with Raúl Zaffaroni anc Cristina Caamaño (Capital Intelectual 2020) which was translated into Portuguese and English, as well as many articles and book chapters in the topics of criminology, transitional justice and criminal law. She has 15 years of experience working in criminal courts and international organizations.

Preface by Dario Melossi

Introduction

Part 1. THEORETICAL APPROACHES ON THE OVER-CRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT

1. Politics of Exception. Criminalizing Activism in Western European Democracies by Katharina Fritsch and Andrea Kretschmann.

2. A Social Control Perspective for the Study of Environmental Harm and Resistance by Alida Szalai

3. The Criminalization and ‘Innovation’ of Resistance. Looking at the Italian Case by Verónica Marchio

Part 2. HISTORICAL EXPERIENCES OF OVER-CRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT

1. Avoiding and Amplifying the Criminal Label in The Roman Republic and Medieval England by Matt Clement

2. The Criminalization of Low-Rank Castes: A Historical Perspective of Mahad Movement in India (1927-1937) by Kruthi Jagadish Kumar, Praveenrao Bolli and Myrna Cintron

3. "Loyal Spear-Carriers": Police Violence in the Queensland Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1971 by Paul Bleakley

4. The Theorem of National Solidarity. Italy and the "7 Aprile" Case. The Criminalisation of Left-Wing Dissent by Vincenzo Scalia

Part 3. CURRENT CASES OF OVER-CRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT IN THE GLOBAL NORTH

USA

1. Resistance to Survive: The Criminalization of the Black Lives Matter Movement by Teresa Francis Divine and Ginny Norris Blackson

2. Between Crime and War: The Security Model of Protest Policing by Paul A. Passavant

EUROPE

3. Fighting for the Right to Save Others: Responses by Civil Society to the Criminalisation of Solidarity in the Mediterranean Sea post-2015 by Christal Chapman ‘

4. Media Representation of Belgian Youth Protests: The Making of ‘Climate Truants’ by Mafalda Pardal, Celine Tack and Frédérique Bawin

5. Criminalization as Strategy of Power: The Case of Catalunya 2017-2020 by Ignasi Bernat and David Whyte

Part 4. CURRENT CASES OF OVER-CRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

1. Protest and Punitive Treatment in Argentina: An Analysis from Latin American Critical Criminology by Gabriela L. Gusis and Rodrigo F. Videla

2. Colombia’s Murderous Democracy Pre- and Post-Covid-19: The Assassination of Social Leaders and the Criminalization of Protest by Natalia Ruiz Morato

3. Violence and Violations of Rights against Leaderships in the Brazilian Amazon by Paula Lacerda and Igor Rolemberg

4. An Analysis of the Criminalisation of Socio-Environmental Activism and Resistance in Contemporary Latin America by Israel Celi, Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti and Grace Iara Souza

5. Notes from the Field: The judicial persecution in the Amazonian Indigenous Struggle- "El Baguazo" -Amazonas-Peru by Saúl Puerta Peña-Pueblo Awajun

Part 5. CHALLENGES FOR A CRITICAL AGENDA ON THE OVER-CRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT

1. Artificial Intelligence and the Criminalisation of Activism by Mark Cowling

2. Covid Cops: A Recent History of Pandemic Policing during the Coronavirus Crisis by Greg Martin

3. Punitive Feminism (or When and Why Did We Start Dividing the World between Good and Evil, rather than between Oppressed and Oppressors) by Tamar Pitch

4. Genocidal Activism and the Language of Criminality: Reflections on the Duality of the Nazi-Era and the Avoidance of Engagement with Histories of Social and Political Activism at the Nuremberg Trials by Wayne Morrison

Index