Call for Abstracts | Gendering Postcolonial Punishment

Special Issue for the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 

We invite submission of abstracts for a special issue of the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, Gendering Postcolonial Punishment, to be guest edited by Lynsey Black (Maynooth University, Ireland) and Lucia Bracco (Pontificia Universidad Católica, Peru).

Theme:

In recent years, criminology has experienced a meaningful shift, one that moves beyond the analytical and epistemological confines of the Global North to greater engagement with the Global South. Increasingly scholars are recognising that criminality, punishment, and confinement must be understood in relation to contextual specificities: the historical, political, economic, and social forces that shape systems of control, order and security. Rather than assuming universal theories of crime and punishment, there is growing recognition that these systems are deeply shaped by local dynamics, colonial legacies, and global inequalities, enabling more nuanced understandings of how these processes operate across diverse settings. We now speak of punishment at the ‘global peripheries’ (Dal Santo & Sozzo, 2023) or of punishment’s ‘imperial legacies’ (Black et al., 2021).  

Within this growing body of work, gender remains underexamined. We know little about how gender is configured within systems of punishment and how postcolonial dynamics intersect with gendered power relations (Bracco, 2022). Feminist decolonial scholarship demonstrates how gender itself is constituted through colonial power relations. A ‘coloniality of gender’ (Lugones, 2008) highlights how punishment operates through racialised, gendered, and sexualised hierarchies that are historically rooted in colonial domination.

Against this, there is a pressing empirical reality: Women’s rates of imprisonment are rising globally (Penal Reform International and the Thailand Institute for Justice, 2023). In some jurisdictions, the hyper-incarceration of Indigenous women has become a defining feature of the penal landscape, leading Baldry and Cunneen (2014) to identify the presence of ‘colonial patriarchy’. Scholars are also increasingly attending to women’s agency and resistance, challenging passive imaginaries and demonstrating how, within coercive spaces, women engage in practices of care, solidarity, and well-being.

Gendered punishment must not be reduced to the experiences of cisgender women nor should it be confined to the prison as its only site. Queer, trans, and non-binary experiences are often rendered invisible within both penal practice and academic analysis, particularly in the Global South.  Moreover, across postcolonial contexts, the regulation and punishment of gender and sexuality often take place through multiple and overlapping institutions—religious orders, psychiatric regimes, immigration systems, family courts, and informal community mechanisms. These are both physical and symbolic spaces of confinement, where the legacies of colonial sexual norms and patriarchal control are reasserted and continue to discipline bodies and identities.

These complexities call for new inquiries into how gendered punishment is structured and experienced in postcolonial settings. Thus, we invite scholars to contribute to a Special Issue that critically explores gender and postcolonial punishment. We encourage submissions that challenge dominant epistemologies and methodologies, and that reflect ‘Souths’ not only as geographies, but as critical, relational, and political positionalities. We are especially interested in how gendered, racialised, and sexualised experiences of punishment are shaped in diverse carceral settings—both concrete and symbolic.

Abstracts are invited on, for example:

The Special Issue guest editors are open to informal enquiries to discuss ideas if this would be useful. You can contact Dr Lynsey Black (lynsey.black@mu.ie) and Dr Lucia Bracco lucia.bracco@pucp.pe)

Key Dates

Abstract submission deadline: 30 March 2026 (abstracts should be sent to both guest editors with the subject “Special Issue: Gendering Postcolonial Punishment”)

Publication: Early 2028

Special Issue Editors

Dr Lynsey Black
Dr Lynsey Black is Associate Professor in the School of law and Criminology, Maynooth University, Ireland. Her research has explored gender and punishment, historical and postcolonial perspectives, and the conflict in Northern Ireland. Her monograph, Gender and Punishment in Ireland, was published by Manchester University Press in 2022.

Dr Lucia Bracco
Lucia Bracco is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Social Sciences Department at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Dr. Bracco has actively worked within Peruvian prisons, focusing on the intricate interplay between macro and micro dimensions in the criminalization and imprisonment of women. Beyond peer-reviewed articles, in 2022, she published the book, Prison in Peru: Ethnographic, Feminist, and Decolonial Perspectives, with Palgrave Macmillan.

 

Baldry, E. & Cunneen, C. (2014). Imprisoned Indigenous women and the shadow of colonial patriarchy. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 47(2), 276-298. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004865813503351.

Black, L., Seal, L., Seemungal, F., et al. (Eds.) (2021). Special Issue. Legacies of Empire. Punishment & Society 23(5). https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211040652.

Bracco, L. (2022). Prison in Peru: Ethnographic, feminist and decolonial perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84409-7

Dal Santo, L., & Sozzo, M. (2023). Introduction: Punishment in global peripheries. Theoretical Criminology, 27(4), 529-537. https://doi.org/10.1177/13624806231199758. 

Lugones, M. (2008). Colonialidad y Género. Tabula Rasa, 9 (jul-dic), 73–101.

Penal Reform International and Thailand Institute of Justice (2023) Global Prison Trends 2023 (PRI/TIJ).