Article

Punishment & Society

2016, Vol. 18(3) 301–324
Democratization, politics ! The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474516645689

in Argentina pun.sagepub.com

Máximo Sozzo
Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina

Abstract
In this paper, I will analyze the metamorphosis of penal policy during the process of
democratization of the last three decades in Argentina. The beginning of the transition
was characterized by an elitist, formalist, and expert-driven mode of penal policy-
making that produced several initiatives towards penal moderation. In this context, a
certain contraction of punitiveness was produced. This pattern changed in the 1990s. In
the context of the extreme neoliberal reforms, some initiatives had emerged oriented
towards the increase of penal severity and extension, in an ambivalent landscape. But in
the second half of this decade, penal populism emerged ‘‘from above’’ as a reaction of
the elites that changed radically the mode of penal policy-making and fueled a great
growth of punitiveness. After the crisis of 2001, there was a new wave of penal populism
‘‘from below’’ supported by strong social mobilizations around the figure of the victim.
This radical mutation of the mode and orientation of penal policy-making generated an
image of an epochal change that seemed to set up a new relationship between penalty
and democracy. However, in the mid-2000s some symptoms of blockage of penal popu-
lism started to appear, creating tensions and contradictions still present today.

Keywords
democratization, politics, punishment

Between 1930—when a democratic government was overthrown by the Armed

Forces for the first time—and 1983—when democracy was finally restored—there
were six coups d’état in Argentina. They all established military dictatorships,
followed by phases of restricted democracy, except for the periods 1946–1955

Corresponding author:
Máximo Sozzo, Facultad de Ciencias Jurı́dicas y Sociales, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Candido Pujato
2751, Primer Piso, Santa Fe, Argentina.
Email: msozzo@fcjs.unl.edu.ar
302 Punishment & Society 18(3)

and 1973–1976. Military dictatorships ruled for about 24 years in half a century. In
1983, Argentina began a complex transition to democracy that, despite obstacles
and crises, has not since suffered a relapse into an authoritarian political regime.
Considering that punishment and democracy are ‘‘mutually constitutive’’
(Barker, 2009: 9, 26, 41; 2013: 129), in this paper I will analyze penal policy changes
during the process of democratization over the last three decades in Argentina.
It could be assumed that the transition to a democratic political regime from an
authoritarian one would imply a general reduction of punitiveness, broadly under-
stood as the multidimensional degree and type of pain delivered by the penal
system (Sozzo, 2011: 43–44). This assumption translates Montesquieu’s (1944)
classical idea: severity of punishment is more adequate to a ‘‘despotic government’’
whose principle is ‘‘terror,’’ than to a ‘‘monarchy’’ or a ‘‘republic,’’ considered
‘‘modern states’’ ruled by ‘‘moderation’’ that protect ‘‘freedom’’ (p. 122). Emile
Durkheim (1999) reworked this argument in his text about ‘‘two laws of penal
evolution’’; he established that ‘‘absolutist political regimes’’ are an ‘‘independent
factor’’ that promotes the increase of ‘‘the intensity of punishment’’ (pp. 71–74, 89).
This typological connection—between extreme form and degree of punitiveness
and ‘‘despotic,’’ ‘‘absolutist,’’ or ‘‘authoritarian’’ political regimes—has also been
supported in contemporary punishment and society literature (for example,
Greenberg, 2002: 246–247; Chevigny, 2003: 78).
However, the few available statistical indicators about punitiveness in
Argentina—with all their limitations—show a less clear picture, both in terms of
penal extension and intensity. For example, in 2013, the incarceration rate was
95% higher than in 1982 (152/100,000 and 78/100,000, respectively). Furthermore,
although sentence rates were 10% lower (71/100,000 in 2013 and 79/100,000 in
1982), they were more severe. Compared to the end of the last dictatorship, there
were more effective sentences—in comparison with suspended ones—(68% in 2013
and 55.5% in 1982) and more medium and long custodial sentences than short
ones—less than three years (61% in 2013 and 85.9% in 1982). But during the last
military dictatorship (1976/1983), there were other massively diffused mechanisms
of social control, primarily handled through the extreme use of violence—disap-
pearances, assassinations, tortures, kidnappings, etc.—that targeted thousands of
citizens suspected of being political dissidents or ‘‘subversives.’’ They were mana-
ged by state authorities and agencies (including penal institutions, particularly
police forces), but outside the law. Evidently, official statistics do not account for
the effects of these mechanisms, which made this exercise of quantitative compar-
ison substantially problematic.
How and why penal policy has changed in the context of
democratization—including but not restricting these questions to the complex pro-
blem of the evolution of punitiveness—has yet to be analyzed by sociological and
criminological research in Latin America. An important recent exception was the
work by Beckett and Godoy (2008)1 which makes a comparative analysis of the
connection between democratization and harsh and exclusionary anti-crime rheto-
ric and practices in Brazil, Guatemala, and the United States. In some way, this
Sozzo 303

paper tries to present a ‘‘careful empirical research’’ ‘‘to further unpack the
political processes that appear to fuel punitiveness in the contexts of struggles
over democratization,’’ which these authors invited to develop (2008: 146) through
the detailed exploration of the Argentine case. This is also an outstanding issue for
other regions of the world that have experienced processes of transition to democ-
racy over the last 40 years, with substantial variations in their dynamics and forms.
It is an obscured dimension of the more frequently addressed connection between
the political and the penal fields in the sociology of punishment, largely focused on
long established liberal democracies of the Global North (Cheliotis and Xenakis,
2016). In this sense, this essay is thought as a further contribution to fill this gap
and an attempt to encourage the development of comparative research into this
more general problem.

Return to democracy: Elitist, expert-driven,

formalist, and moderate penal policy
The democratization process began with the election of Raul Alfonsı́n as President
of Argentina for the Union Cı´vica Radical, a liberal-oriented political party,
traditionally linked to the middle classes. It was the first time in democracy that
the Unión Civica Radical (UCR) had defeated the Partido Justicialista, the other
major political party born as the institutional embodiment of the Peronist move-
ment in the mid-1940s . Alfonsı́n tried to reorient his political party to social
democratic positions, which was translated into his governmental program,
albeit with oscillations and ambiguities.
In the penal field, the first years of the transition to democracy were marked by
legal changes intended to produce moderation, as a rupture with the recent author-
itarian past and as a symbolic message both inside and outside the country.2 Many
of these changes were immediate (in 1984), such as limiting the aggravating
circumstance of recidivism and the possibility of applying an ‘‘indeterminate secur-
ity measure’’ to multi-recidivists; expanding the use of suspended sentences and
abolishing various reforms produced after the 1976 coup that aggravated penalties.
Among these reforms, one stood out for its practical impact: the enactment of a law
establishing a special computation for those sentenced or on remand who had
been in prison during the military dictatorship. It credited 3 days for 2 days
actually served; for ‘‘political prisoners,’’ every day actually served would be cred-
ited as 2 days.
There were also various initiatives to prosecute and punish the last military
dictatorship’s crimes, not only as a way of doing justice but also to symbolically
support the need to impede abuses and excesses by state authorities and institu-
tions. Alfonsı́n’s government tried, almost from the beginning, to confine said
prosecution and punishment to the leaders and higher officials in the
Armed Forces. After military pressure and uprisings, this restriction resulted in
the enactment of the so-called ‘‘Full Stop’’ and ‘‘Due Obedience’’ Laws in 1986 and
1987, respectively. However, the developments in this area made the transition to
304 Punishment & Society 18(3)

democracy in Argentina clearly different from other simultaneous or subsequent

processes in Latin America (Sozzo, 2011: 9–12).
These penal initiatives were an expression of a mode of penal policy-making that
could be defined as elitist, expert-driven, and formalist:

a. It was elitist3 in a strict sense, as it was in the hands of a relatively small

network of privileged people: some elected politicians—from the Executive
and the Legislative Branches—academics, criminal prosecutors, and judges.
It was set up through formal—in official bodies like Commissions or
Councils—and informal contacts that were closed and protected from other
actors’—mainly the public’s—intrusion. It was also elitist because this network
operated detached from public opinion, placing what legal experts considered
‘‘should be’’ at the heart of their debates. The need for shaping and guiding
public opinion in this matter seemed to be part of its participants’ beliefs. In the
initial phase of the transition to democracy, a certain paternalistic vision often
regarded the public as influenced by authoritarianism in recent history, and
dangerously leaning towards beliefs and values considered incompatible
with the principles the democratic order needed to establish (Gargarella,
2010: 33–34, 41–42).
b. It was expert-driven because the voice of criminal law academics, in close
association with elected politicians, was central to these initiatives. The legal
experts’ authority was based on their academic careers and positions, but they
were not part of a professionalized and specialized bureaucratic state structure
built around these issues. Their voices were structured within the framework of
knowledge about what ‘‘should be,’’ concerning legal principles and rules and
their interpretations, which characterizes law schools of Spanish-speaking
countries. Thus, considerations about ‘‘what is happening’’—‘‘criminal law in
facts’’ versus ‘‘criminal law in books’’—were marginalized. They were intro-
duced by the unsystematic observations of the protagonists, many of whom
were or had been criminal lawyers, prosecutors, or judges. These legal experts
talked with elected politicians who, in turn, did not regard these issues as
central to their agenda or to the competition with their opponents in the demo-
cratic process.4 Most of the legal reforms carried out in this area during the first
democratic government originated in the Executive Branch, which did not
prevent the political opposition—or a substantial part of it—from accepting
them.5 There was some consensus between the major political parties on these
penal initiatives in particular and, to some extent, about the general direction
towards penal moderation.
c. It was ‘‘formalist’’ because it relied mainly on the creation of criminal law as
the mechanism to produce changes. It overlooked the processes of law enforce-
ment, taking for granted that they would be developed automatically as pre-
scribed in legal texts, largely reflecting the predominant knowledge in this
mode, and, therefore, giving a high degree of autonomy to penal institutions
and authorities which remained unaccountable. These state structures, heavily
Sozzo 305

colonized by traditional and authoritarian ways of thinking and acting, did not
experience any reform processes or even renewal of their members in this
period, except for a limited one in the administration of criminal justice—which
particularly affected its higher echelons but was truncated as a legal and orga-
nizational change (Sozzo, 2011, 12–14).6 Consequently, the traditional gap
between ‘‘law in books’’ and ‘‘law in practice’’ remained a dominant feature
of penal policy (Iturralde, 2010: 313; Sozzo, 2011: 18–20).

Within this framework, certain dimensions of punitiveness were contracted with

the onset of the transition to democracy.7 There is no official information available
to build an incarceration rate for the entire country during this period, but it is
possible to do so for certain key jurisdictions, such as Buenos Aires and Santa Fe
Provinces. There is also data on the volume of inmates in federal prisons, accused
and convicted of federal crimes and common crimes committed in national juris-
dictions, like the city of Buenos Aires. Between 1983 and 1984, the prison popula-
tion in these three jurisdictions dropped by 28%, 42%, and 51%, respectively. But
from that moment on, there was a steady growth during the remainder of the
decade. In 1989, the incarceration rates in Buenos Aires and Santa Fe Provinces
were the same as at the end of the military dictatorship—66/100,000 and
41/100,000, respectively—but the volume of the federal prison population was
still 15% smaller than in 1983.8 In the case of sentence rates, there was also a
28% decline nationwide between 1983 and 1989 and an expansion of suspended
sentences in comparison with effective ones—44.5% in 1983 and 55.4% in 1989.

Neoliberal changes and penal ambivalence

This mode of penal policy-making was not substantially modified as a result of a
major political transformation brought about by the first democratic change of
government. However, a certain degree of innovation was introduced in the orien-
tation of the penal measures adopted.
Alfonsı́n’s government was strongly marked by a permanent economic crisis,
mainly a consequence of the 1976 military dictatorship’s adoption of neoliberal
economic policies. These economic changes began the ‘‘latinamericanization’’ of
Argentine society, characterized by the growth of poverty and social inequality. In
1974, 10% of the households with the highest income concentrated 27% of social
wealth; in 1989, it grew to 41.7%. In 1989, poverty reached 47.4% of the population; it
was 26.3% in 1983 and 5.1% in 1974. At the beginning of 1989, the economic crisis
deepened and the country was racked with hyperinflation. In this context, the UCR
lost the presidential elections that year to the PJ, whose candidate was Carlos Menem.
Once elected, president Menem adopted a neoliberal vocabulary and program,
although he campaigned with a contrary rhetoric. Abruptly and unprecedentedly,
neoliberal policies brutally dismantled the traditionally strong state presence in
economic activities by opening up to the world market, deregulation, foreign
investment stimulation, privatization of State companies, etc.9
306 Punishment & Society 18(3)

The Menemist hegemony, built through this new neoliberal identity intricately
intertwined with elements of Peronist tradition, was ratified with its triumph in
legislative and governor elections, and the 1994 reform of the National
Constitution, which allowed presidential reelection. Menem won the 1995 presi-
dential elections and took office for the second time for a period of four years.
This happened in the context of a drop of inflation, economic growth, and a decline
in poverty levels—16.1% at the beginning of 1994—and despite the growth of
unemployment and underemployment—a traditionally limited phenomenon—and
its social and economic effects, they reached 18.6% and 30.4% of the population,
respectively, at the beginning of 1995. As a result, social polarization and fragmen-
tation became extremely marked (Pegoraro, 1997: 54–59; 2000: 115–116; Svampa,
2005: 33–34).
Street crime became more significant in the public and political debate during
the first Menem administration.10 Associated with its process of multiplication and
privatization, the media changed the way they addressed this issue by increasing the
number of news reports, and using a sensationalist tone for selected violent crime
stories (Rodriguez, 2000: 186, 195; Pegoraro, 2000: 119). In the public discourse of
key Menemist actors, there was a greater presence of street crime (mainly con-
nected with illegal drugs), perhaps associated with this change in the way media
addressed the problem and with the more general ‘‘mediatization of politics’’
(Novaro: 2009, 402). President Menem even sent in a bill to the National
Congress to reintroduce death penalty for drug traffiking (Novaro, 2009: 400).
That new emphasis was not completely transferred to the political debate and
competition, and remained largely marginal in the electoral campaigns, which
were heavily focused on neoliberal reforms and scandals of corruption. The devel-
opment of a neoliberal political program with all its local peculiarities was not
initially accompanied by a decisive and intense politicization of street crime, as had
happened previously in other contexts of the Global North.
The mode of penal policy-making at the beginning of the return to democracy
was not substantially modified. It continued to be elitist, expert-driven, and form-
alist. Because the network of participants was largely not institutionalized in State
bureaucracies, the change of government led to a partial replacement of its privi-
leged members. There were no changes in the type of expertise recognized as
a source of authority.11 Legal experts continued to have a central place.
Consequently, the creation of the penal law continued to be the main instrument
of penal policy, granting great autonomy to penal institutions and to their tradi-
tional and authoritarian modes of thinking and acting.
The first Menem administration witnessed a significant growth in the number of
criminal laws produced, some of which were clearly oriented towards the increase
of punitiveness, an important change compared to the first moment of the transi-
tion. However, most of them had marginal impact on the operation of the penal
system (Gutiérrez, 2010: 59–60). One that did produce some immediate practical
effects of penal toughening was the so-called Anti-Drugs Law, passed in 1989. It
punished the possession of illegal drugs for personal use, and considerably
Sozzo 307

increased the penalties for other offenses. This law, passed within the context of the
transition between governments, was supported by both major political parties,
following the U.S. government’s pressures to adopt a more conservative, repressive
approach to drug policies in Latin America. However, during the same period,
other initiatives expressed a tendency towards penal moderation, e.g., the so-called
‘‘Two-for-One’’ Law, passed under the pressure exerted by appalling overcrowding
and a wave of riots in Buenos Aires Province prisons. It established a maximum
period to be remanded in custody in the criminal process, after which every day the
person remained in prison was to be counted as two days serving the prison
sentence they eventually received.
This penal ambivalence was partly because diverse state actors, with their own
orientations, promoted these different initiatives. It was also related to the more
general ambivalence shown by Menemism as a governmental program, worshiping
pragmatism, and making the most of the ability to adapt to different circumstances
and situations, which was also important in the Peronist tradition (Novaro, 2009:
396). Penal ambivalence was, therefore, part of a more general characteristic of this
political program.12
In this period, the indicators of punitiveness available grew—contrary to what
had happened in the first moment of the transition—and significantly in some
cases. The federal prison population increased 52% between 1989 and 1995,
reaching a level 28% higher than at the end of the military dictatorship. The
incarceration rate in Buenos Aires Province grew 14%—reaching a rate 15%
higher than in 1983—and in Santa Fe Province it increased 7%—reaching the
same level as in 1983. Meanwhile, the rate of sentences in the country grew
14%, although it was still 18% lower than at the end of the military dictatorship.
Similarly, short custodial sentences (less than three years) decreased from 84.4% in
1989 to 71.4% in 1995.

Penal populism ‘‘from above’’

From the mid-1990s onward, there was a change in the relationship between pun-
ishment and democracy in Argentina. The mode of penal policy-making and its
predominant orientation showed a marked shift that seemed to displace radically
its precedent traits.
Menem’s second government started by promising the ‘‘social stage of the
reforms,’’ but unemployment, poverty, and inequality continued to grow,
making social fragmentation and polarization even stronger. In addition, the
attempt to sustain the ‘‘economic model’’ and several cases of corruption created
a political and cultural climate of delegitimization of Menemism, evident in their
election losses of 1996 and 1997.
During these electoral campaigns, key actors in this governmental alliance
started to develop a political discourse—through the media—about street crime
as the fundamental problem of Argentine society, using the idea of ‘‘insecurity’’
stripped of its traditional connotation associated with the adjective ‘‘social’’
308 Punishment & Society 18(3)

(Pegoraro, 1997). This discourse defined the problem through five interrelated
messages: street crime is growing; the use of violence, especially firearms, is increas-
ing; minors’ involvement is growing; crime and illegal drugs are connected; and
poverty, unemployment, and crime are not linked. It explicitly appealed to the need
for toughening penal policy as a solution to this problem (Chevigny, 2003: 84–85;
Martinez, 2011: 3–4). The main proposals were: the reintroduction of death pen-
alty, lowering the age of criminal responsibility; increasing penalties for crimes
involving firearms and for recidivists; expanding the uses of prison on remand;
expanding the powers of the police to stop, interrogate, and arrest; and adopting a
‘‘zero tolerance’’ policing model. It was a perfect example of a conscious strategy
developed by sectors of the political elite, confronting a crisis of legitimization,
trying to produce political consensus using tough on crime rhetoric, diverting
public attention from other pressing social and economic problems.
As the 1999 general elections approached, this definition of the problem and
proposals became more central to the Menemist discourse. Less extremist rhetoric
appeals, though still oriented towards toughening penal policy, started to be heard
within the main political opposition, the Alianza—an alliance of political parties
against Menemism—particularly after its more moderate wing won their primary
elections. As in the terrain of economic policy, the Alianza’s discourse on ‘‘inse-
curity’’ was getting closer to some ideas pushed forward by Menemist actors.13
Beyond the remaining differences, and through this political and electoral debate, a
consensus was built across the political spectrum on the promotion of measures to
toughen penal policy.
Many legal changes during President Menem’s second government increased
penal severity, but they were rather symbolic in their effects (Gutiérrez, 2010:
60). However, some did have an impact on penal practices. They were far less
ambitious than the promises launched by the politicians and did not match their
proposals. An early example was a law that increased penalties for car theft passed
in 1996. Other examples were produced in 1999, in one of the most critical
moments of the politicization of crime, like increasing penalties for the possession
of firearms or sexual abuses (Martı́nez, 2011: 5–6). Nevertheless, few penal
initiatives with a different tendency, reproduced, although limitedly, the penal
ambivalence of President Menem’s first government—and as a consequence of
the same reasons related to the heterogeneous composition of this political alliance
and the role of pragmatism in its operation. An example was the new Prison Law
passed in 1996, which clearly adhered to the correctional model traditionally pro-
moted in legal and penitentiary discourses during the 20th century.
In 1999, the Alianza won the presidential elections. President De la Rúa’s admin-
istration, characterized from the beginning by ‘‘continuism’’ and ‘‘possibilism,’’
continued to adopt neoliberal economic policy measures promoted by international
organisms, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This
produced a rapid and strong crisis of legitimacy. In December 2001, constant social
protests broke out in riots in different cities. Mobilized citizens from middle and
popular sectors cried in the squares opposite the houses of government: ‘‘All of
Sozzo 309

them must go! Not even one should remain!,’’ a slogan that expressed the dramatic
nature of the political representation crisis. The demonstrations were harshly
repressed by police forces, resulting in 40 deaths and hundreds of wounded and
arrested. President De la Rúa resigned, producing an unprecedented situation. The
Legislative Assembly named Eduardo Duhalde—former candidate for the PJ in
the 1999 presidential elections— President, until December 2003 (Novaro, 2009,
553–615). The Duhalde administration introduced moderately heterodox economic
policies. Under the deepest social and economic crisis Argentina had experienced
since the beginning of the transition to democracy, levels of social fragmentation
and polarization became even more extreme. In 2002, unemployment reached
21.5% and poverty reached 54.3% of the population. But 2001 and 2002 were
also seen as an ‘‘extraordinary time’’: the rupture with the fatalism of the neoliberal
process. Numerous social organizations produced several forms of political mobi-
lization and action, creating a high level of social conflict which, in some cases, was
confronted by police repression. This brought about widespread social discontent
with the Duhalde administration and the general election was called for April 2003,
six months ahead of schedule (Svampa, 2005: 263–266, 271–272).
The politicization of crime did not fade away after the 1999 governmental
change. The problem of ‘‘insecurity’’ remained in the center of the public and
political agenda. President De la Rúa reached an agreement with part of the
opposition to promote both national and provincial legal reforms. Some aimed
at greater extension and severity of the penal system and had significant practical
effects, such as the introduction of a new general aggravating cause when crimes
were committed using firearms or the abolition of the special two-for-one jail-time
credit for pre-trial custody as defined by the 1994 law. In Buenos Aires Province,
several procedural and penitentiary reforms were introduced, expanding the use of
prison on remand and restricting transitory releases.
As in President Menem’s second government, penal policy-making during the
Alianza government was firmly focused on the creation of laws. As it had happened
from the beginning of the transition to democracy, this was combined with delega-
tion to the police and penitentiary authorities, who maintained their traditional
and authoritarian ways of thinking and acting.14 This delegation and autonomy
was amalgamated, however, with a strong political pressure on criminal prosecu-
tors and judges, often through the media, and oriented towards toughening their
everyday decisions.
Officially registered property crime rate in the country grew constantly between
1995 and 2002 (88%). This increase was similar in Buenos Aires city (87%) but
extremely higher in the Buenos Aires Province (169%). Intentional homicides grew
more moderately in this period in the country (28%) but to a greater degree in
Buenos Aires Province (75%), compared to a 14% increase in Buenos Aires city.15
It is possible to think that the development of these punitive rhetoric and measures
were made possible by the growth of street crime and the consequent diffusion of
fear of crime, which placed this problem among the fundamental public concerns
and demands.16 In this interpretation–what Beckett (1997: 3–4) defined as the
310 Punishment & Society 18(3)

‘‘democracy-at-work’’ thesis—politicians put the problem of crime and crime

control at the centre of the public agenda—particularly during electoral
campaigns—and promoted toughening penal policy to respond to these public
concern and demands. However, it is important to remember that during
Alfonsin‘s government, an even bigger growth of crime officially registered was
produced, but it was not translated in a similar process of politicization of crime
and development of punitive rhetoric and measures. The political elites—not in a
uniform way, but affected by conflicts and struggles—have the capacity to define
social problems. With their privileged access to the media and the sphere of public
debate, especially when they are state officials, they can determine, to a certain
extent, how some segments of the public understand these issues. This is not always
artificially crafted, though, as they select meanings that resonate with the public’s
experiences of everyday life (Beckett, 1997: 3–7, 63–65; Beckett and Sasson, 2001:
20, 82–83, 119, see also, Sparks, 2003a: 31; Zimring and Johnson, 2006: 268–269;
Lacey, 2008: 53; Barker, 2009: 17). However, the increase in street crime, especially
if it is fast and of a high magnitude, and given the presence of other political and
cultural factors, may contribute to the development of punitive rhetoric and mea-
sures—but never by itself—which, in turn, can be produced without it (Becket,
1997: 15; Roberts et al., 2003: 12–13; Zimring and Johnson, 2006: 275; Pratt, 2007:
37; Beckett and Godoy, 2008: 149; Gottshalck, 2013b: 255).
This is how the first wave of ‘‘penal populism’’ was constructed in Argentina.
Penal toughening was legitimized by appealing to what ‘‘the people’’ thought and
wanted. These opinions and demands defined by politicians, in dialog with journal-
ists and public opinion pollsters, were built as if they were uniform, without eco-
nomic and social division and prior to these agent’s definitions—exactly the
opposite of what actually happens (Bottoms, 1995: 40; Zedner, 2002: 34, Barker,
2013: 138; Gottshalck, 2013a: 232). They were built confronting the opposing views
of the experts, especially criminal law professors and members of the judiciary,
derogatively labeled garantistas, who were in favor of the offender’s rights and
guarantees, and were seen as part of an ‘‘establishment’’ that had to be dethroned
to do ‘‘what is needed’’ (Zimring, 1996–1997: 253–255; Roberts et al., 2003: 54;
Pratt, 2007: 84; Lacey, 2008: 75). These actors employed a language of common
sense, intentionally distanced from the technicalities of legal and criminological
vocabularies, channeled through slogans that were easy to communicate through
the media and could embody outrage and fear (Pratt, 2007: 12).
Undoubtedly, this shift increased the weight of the ‘‘political arm’’ of state
structures in this field (Garland, 2001: 13–14, 111–113). Professional politicians
sought political consensus through proposals to increase punitiveness, which
were turned into a pseudo-commodity in the political exchange. They attempted
to win voters’ support, precisely when they had lost their capacity to win it through
action on other macroscopic issues as a consequence of the diffused sense of inevit-
ability and fatalism around neoliberal reforms and rhetoric dominating democratic
politics during this period (Pavarini, 2006: 122–125). Predominant political visions
and strategies were linked to the short-term political situation. A sort of ‘‘state of
Sozzo 311

emergency’’ was frequently invoked to do what had to be done quickly

(Sparks, 2003b: 155, Roberts et al., 2003: 71–72; Pratt, 2007: 26). These rapid
actions had to be visible to give the impression that something was being done,
here and now (Bottoms, 1995: 39, Garland, 1996: 460–461).
It was a penal populism ‘‘from above,’’ built by members of the elites. It did not
have a starting point and was not subsequently accompanied by social movements
‘‘from below’’ that strongly and persistently embodied this kind of punitive claims.
Pratt distinguishes ‘‘penal populism’’ from ‘‘authoritarian populism,’’ which
characterized political programs as Thatcherism in Britain. In the latter case,
‘‘there was no popular movement outside the establishment putting forward the
view of ‘the people’ that politicians could then make synergy with’’ (2007: 33).
For him, in the emergence of ‘‘penal populism,’’ this kind of ‘‘popular movement’’
became central. In Argentina, in this first wave, such processes did not acquire the
degree and weight mentioned by Pratt (see also Pratt and Clarke, 2005: 304–307,
313–315). This is precisely the main change that penal populism would experience
in the early 2000s.
During this period, punitiveness rose sharply. Argentina’s incarceration rate
went from 71/100,000 in 1996 to 123/100,000 in 2002, a 73% increase in six
years. A similar growth was observed in Buenos Aires Province (78%) and, to a
lower degree, in federal prison population (41%). The increase in sentence rates
was more moderate (17% nationwide). Additionally, there was an increase in the
severity of sentences, with the reduction of suspended sentences—from 50% of the
sentences imposed in 1996 to 43% in 2002—and longer custodial sentences—in
1996, 78% of the prison sentences were for less than three years, but they decreased
to 72% in 2002.

Penal populism ‘‘from below’’

In the May 2003 elections, various political forces born from Peronism faced each
other. On the one hand, a sector led by ex-President Menem presented themselves
as an obvious continuity with the 1990s. On the other hand, a sector led by Nestor
Kirchner, endorsed by President Duhalde, presented themselves as a break from
that decade, a return to the original sources, adopting a ‘‘post-neoliberal’’ position.
The election campaign, as its immediate precedent in 1999, was strongly marked by
the issue of crime. Menem deployed the rhetoric of being tough on crime, repeating
his old proposals of the late 1990s. Kirchner’s antithetical discourse, however,
highlighted the connection between insecurity and the growth of poverty and
unemployment as another perverse result of neoliberal reforms, and advocated
social inclusion, crime prevention, and prosecution of crimes of the powerful.
Menem won 24% of the vote and Kirchner obtained 22%, but Menem resigned
to participate in the second round which was constitutionally required. Thus,
Kirchner became president with the lowest approval rating in Argentina’s demo-
cratic history. He then began to build ‘‘Kirchnerism,’’ a political alliance represent-
ing a new postneoliberal face of the Peronist tradition, which remained in power
312 Punishment & Society 18(3)

until 2015—with modifications—through Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s 2007

election and 2011 re-election.
President Kirchner’s progressive rhetoric was matched by measures, such as
appointing Raul Zaffaroni—a recognized radical-oriented criminal law profes-
sor—to the Supreme Court of Justice, and promoting the prosecution and punish-
ment of state crimes during the last military dictatorship through a legal reform
and sustained political pressure. This began a strong alliance between most human
rights organizations and Kirchnerism, held until today. It resulted in a strong,
constant presence of the issue of human rights, especially in connection to the
last military dictatorship’s crimes, in Kirchnerism’s agenda and rhetoric. Since
then, there has been an important process of prosecution, trial, and punishment
of such offenses—that produced between 2006 and 2013 632 sentences and 3180
criminal cases (Feierstein, 2015: 220).
However, in March 2004, the kidnapping and murder of Axel Blumberg, a
young middle class student in Greater Buenos Aires, sparked a strong social mobi-
lization to demand increasing punitiveness in different ways: the ‘‘Axel Crusade.’’
Five million citizens signed a petition to the National Congress, and three massive
demonstrations in front of the National Congress and House of Government, the
first of which congregated more than 150,000 people, demanded legal and policy
changes. Media coverage of this campaign, featuring the victim’s father, was con-
stant (Calzado and Van den Dooren, 2009: 98–101). It inaugurated a second wave
of penal populism ‘‘from below,’’ supported by social mobilizations around the
victim, whose pain was deemed to produce moral authority.17 It was a wave against
an establishment imagined as consisting not only of experts but also of professional
politicians, believed to favor experts’ opinions and to overlook what ‘‘the people’’
thought and wanted. This social mobilization was connected to, and made possible
by, the 2001 political representation crisis (Svampa, 2005: 263–266, 271–272;
Kessler and Grimson, 2005: 173–175; Schillagi, 2009: 30).
The Axel Crusade’s political impact was strong. In both the Executive and
Legislative Branches, at the national and provincial levels—especially in Buenos
Aires Province, epicenter of the Blumberg case—the main political parties—includ-
ing Kirchnerism, despite its initial progressive rhetoric—built consensus on the
need to react urgently to what was claimed to be the public’s demand for penal
toughening. Some contributed to this consensus ‘‘for convenience,’’ others because
of ‘‘conviction,’’ since there were politicians who had actively supported the pre-
vious wave of penal populism. An idea posed by Garland (1996: 445), and inspired
by Durkheim, may be helpful to reflect on this reaction: In times of uncertainty and
social unrest caused by the citizenry’s perceptions of distrust and illegitimacy, weak
democratic political authorities tend to resort to repressive instruments to provide
the appearance of maintaining both social order and their privileged position (see
also Sparks, 2003a: 34; 2003b: 168; Zimring and Johnson, 2006: 276; Pratt, 2007:
52, 64, Barker, 2009: 7).
As in the first wave of penal populism, the preferred instrument was legal
reform. Blumberg himself, his advisers, and colleagues attended the debate sessions
Sozzo 313

in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. They were even allowed to participate
in some discussions of Committees, unprecedented in Argentine legislative tradi-
tion (Calzado and Van den Dooren, 2009: 107–108). Legal changes aiming at
increasing punitiveness, known thereafter in the political and media discourse as
the ‘‘Blumberg reforms,’’ were produced. At the national level, between April and
August 2004, penalties for various crimes and restrictions for the use of parole and
temporary release were increased. In Buenos Aires Province, legal reforms aimed at
expanding the use of pretrial detention were also sanctioned.
These legal changes and demands for greater punitiveness in the public and
political debate helped to maintain a ‘‘climate’’ (Sparks, 2003a: 32) particularly
strong in Buenos Aires Province that called for greater severity in daily decisions by
criminal justice officials. This climate involved criticism and direct pressures from
political actors on judicial actors around specific cases.
The previous wave of penal populism had broken with the elitist and expert-
driven mode of penal policy-making, protected from any kind of intervention by
the public and with its predominant orientation towards penal moderation, though
always limited in its real effects. This first wave, constructed in the political and
media fields, put what ‘‘the people’’ thought and wanted on these issues at the
center of the public sphere for the first time in the transition to democracy, carrying
a message that a real democratization in the penal field was still lacking. This
message encouraged certain social actors confronting concrete manifestations of
crime and using their victimization as a legitimating basis, to declare themselves
representatives of ‘‘the people’’ and to present demands for penal changes. In this
sense, this wave of penal populism ‘‘from below’’ was based on the previous wave
of penal populism ‘‘from above.’’
It was also made possible by the ‘‘crisis of insecurity,’’ socially and politically
constructed since the late 1990s. This was closely connected with the devastating
economic, social, and cultural effects of neoliberal reforms that had created wide-
spread social vulnerability and exclusion, and a diffused sense of uncertainty, pre-
cariousness, and mutation—even among the socially included—that had found a
channel for expression and condensation trough the problem of street crime.18
Following the previous trend, the incarceration rate in Argentina grew 17%
between 2002 and 2005, arriving at 144/100,000. In Buenos Aires Province, the
increase was even higher (28%). Federal prison population grew less (9%).
Sentence rates increased significantly by 29%. Moreover, the severity of sentences
intensified: suspended sentences were reduced—from 42% in 2002 to 35% in
2005—and longer custodial sentences imposed—in 2002, 72% of these convictions
were for less than three years and decreased to 66% in 2005.

Blockages, tensions, and contradictions

The radical changes in penal policy-making mode and orientation between the late
1990s and early 2000s generated an image of an epochal change that seemed to
establish a new relationship between penalty and democratic politics. However, in
314 Punishment & Society 18(3)

the mid-2000s, symptoms of blockage of penal populism started to appear, creating

tensions and contradictions still present today.
The consolidation of Kirchnerism as a ‘‘postneoliberal’’ political alliance and
program through the triumphs in the 2005 and 2007 elections coincided with a sort
of blockage of penal populism. Kirchnerism’s political strength displaced crime
from the center of the political and public debate, even confronting mobilizations
from some social sectors demanding more punitiveness. This was not the result of a
specific set of decisions and actions, as was the case in other areas of public policy,
which promoted the image of rupture with the recent past, central to its political
identity.
There was almost no successful initiative to increase punitiveness in those
years.19 Some even attempted penal moderation, e.g., a 2006 legal reform in
Buenos Aires Province restricting imprisonment on remand and overturning pre-
vious legal changes produced during the waves of penal populism. This resulted
from strategies by several actors—like the federal Supreme Court of Justice
and human rights organizations—in the context of a judicial process (the
Verbitsky case).
Kirchnerism largely caused this blockage by imposing other issues, related to
their own program and agenda, in the political and public debate that created
strong social antagonisms and conflicts: from the alignment with progressive
South American governments against the US policy for the Americas to the natio-
nalization of previously privatized public service companies (Svampa, 2011: 23–27;
2013: 14). This was particularly evident during the campaigns for the 2007 pre-
sidential and governor elections: Crime almost disappeared from the rhetoric of
kirchnerist candidates and from debates with the opposition. Kirchnerism won the
presidential election with 45% of the votes (Colombo, 2011: 194–202; Svampa,
2011: 27–29). This proves that the politicization of the penal question is not irre-
versible, but subject to the outcomes of political struggles (Sparks, 2003b: 149). It is
largely a result of the depoliticization of other issues, meaning it is possible to
observe situations where this trend is reversed (Christie, 2004: 52–55, 58–59;
Zedner, 2002: 363).
Another important condition for this blockage was the economic recovery and
its social effects after the 2001 crisis. Economic growth, the decrease in unemploy-
ment and poverty,20 and salary raises produced a positive climate among middle
and working classes, generating barriers against the translation of social anxieties
and insecurities into concerns and demands about street crime.21
Incarceration rate decreased 8% from 2005 to 2007, reaching 133/100,000, and
so did federal prison population by 6% and in the Buenos Aires Province by 8%.
This reduction is also observed in sentence rates: 10% lower in 2007 than in 2005.
Since President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner took office at the end of 2007,
Kirchnerism’s approach to penal policy at the national level was mostly main-
tained. In 2008, Kirchnerism lost a key vote in the National Congress about an
initiative to raise taxes on commodities exportations, strongly opposed by produ-
cers and most of the political opposition. This conflict produced tensions and
Sozzo 315

ruptures inside Kirchnerism. During the 2009 campaign for legislative elections, in
a context of political weakness, some of its key actors introduced messages in favor
of increasing punitiveness. This happened again in the 2013 campaign for legisla-
tive elections, another moment of political weakness, after growing economic pro-
blems that had become more visible since 2011, and several corruption scandals. In
fact, Kirchnerism lost both elections in the most important jurisdictions.22
Aside from these partial and contingent changes in political and electoral rheto-
ric, Kirchnerism continued to fill the public and political debate with issues other
than crime and punishment, which produced strong social antagonisms and con-
flicts: from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the legal regulation
against media corporate monopolies. In fact, in the 2011 presidential elections
campaign, Kirchnerism reproduced the strategy of 2007 using a progressive rheto-
ric about crime and displacing its central position. President Fernandez de
Kirchner won with 54% of the votes. (Svampa, 2011: 27–31, 2013: 15).23
In general, over the past years there were no initiatives to increase punitive-
ness at a national level, like the ones experienced during the precedent waves of
penal populism. There were some criminal law reforms that increased penal
severity, promoted by sectors of the feminist movement and international
organizations, supported by broad sectors of the political parties in the
National Congress—including Kirchnerism—such as the 2009 human trafficking
law, reformed in 2012, and the introduction of femicide as an aggravated homi-
cide in 2012. These reforms, however, were somewhat different in their origins
and dynamics from the recent ones and their practical impact was much more
limited.
Some small-scale initiatives towards penal moderation were also introduced,
such as a legal reform in 2009, which allowed house arrest for imprisoned
women with children under five years of age. In May 2012, however, the
President launched a more ambitious initiative in this direction: creating a
Commission to draft a new Penal Code, presided by Raul Zaffaroni, Supreme
Court judge and activist against conservative penal policies. The Commission con-
sisted of politicians from the main political parties represented in the National
Congress, some with a background in the penal field. Far from the dynamics of
penal populism, legal experts returned to the spotlight, protected from the public’s
direct influences, but with an important role for politicians, as a legacy of the recent
politicization of crime. The new Penal Code draft, presented in February 2014,
tends towards penal moderation, reducing the punishment for several offenses and
creating an array of alternatives to imprisonment. Vast sectors of the political
opposition rejected it, in a climate already marked by the general elections of
2015, which blocked its discussion in the National Congress.
Simultaneously, however, Kirchnerist Buenos Aires Province Governor Scioli,
reelected in 2011, has promoted several legal and policy initiatives since 2008
towards increasing penal severity in matters under provincial jurisdiction (criminal
procedure and penitentiary legislation). His political and electoral rhetoric favors
penal toughening. For example, he promoted new legal changes expanding
316 Punishment & Society 18(3)

imprisonment on remand. In this key province, Kirchnerism has been part and
parcel of a new wave of penal populism, with more limited effects over the last
years.24
In this context, imprisonment rates increased moderately. Between 2007 and
2013 the incarceration rate grew 14%, reaching 152/100,000 nationwide. In
Buenos Aires Province, it increased by 13% reaching 176/100,000. Federal
prison population grew by 9%. Sentence rates remained stable, but the amount
of suspended sentences decreased (from 38% to 32%) and so did short custodial
sentences (from 66% to 61%).

Conclusions
The exploration of the Argentine case demonstrates that under the transition from
an authoritarian to a democratic regime two different modes of penal policy-
making—elitist or populist—may emerge, articulated with two different orienta-
tions and effects—the containment or expansion of punitiveness. In this national
case, both modes and directions/effects were produced in a sequential manner.
Initially, an elitist—expert-driven and formalist—mode generated penal initiatives
that, at least in certain key dimensions, resulted in some containment of punitive-
ness compared with the levels reached during the last dictatorship—albeit in a
limited way because the same measures taken solely in the field of ‘‘criminal law
on the books’’ left substantially untouched everyday authoritarian and traditional
modes of thinking and acting in penal institutions. At the same time, this mode of
penal policy-making did not generate the development of participatory and delib-
erative mechanisms, leaving a democratization deficit (Johnston, 1999; Loader and
Sparks, 2012; Ryan, 1999, 2003). After a second phase of penal ambivalence intro-
ducing initiatives to increase punitiveness without substantially altering this mode, a
radical mutation occurred with the emergence of penal populism. In the context of
the devastating economic, social, and cultural effects of neoliberal reforms that
would lead to the most serious political crisis since the beginning of the transition
to democracy, sectors of the elites responded to the weakening of their legitimacy by
launching a rhetoric and measures in favor of increasing punitiveness in the media
and in the political arena. Based on the appeal to ‘‘what the people want’’ and the
criticism of the ‘‘establishment’’—especially of the experts—they exploited the demo-
cratization deficit of the previous mode of penal policy-making. This wave ‘‘from
above’’ contributed to a subsequent wave ‘‘from below,’’ which was cemented in
social mobilizations around the figure of the victim and caused even more impact in
terms of penal initiatives, reinforcing the trend towards an effective increase of
punitiveness. This radical mutation then acquired such strength that seemed to
represent an epochal change, structuring another relation between punishment and
democratic politics. However, that marked the beginning of a fourth moment, colo-
nized by tensions and contradictions, within the framework of economic recovery
and its social and cultural effects. From the rise of a post-neoliberal governmental
alliance which installed other issues at the center of the political and public agenda
Sozzo 317

that generated strong social antagonisms and conflicts, there was a relative displace-
ment of the problem of crime, and especially of the rhetoric of ‘‘mano dura.’’ But this
happened in the context of political struggles within and outside that governmental
alliance, which gave rise to certain periodic but limited relapses of the punitive
temptation. This in turn resulted in a certain sinuosity of punitiveness indicators,
which experienced some contraction at first and some expansion afterwards.
We can also observe this sequence, beyond its connection with the transition
between two political regimes, from the point of view of contemporary debates
about the ‘‘quality of democracy’’ (O’Donnell, 1999, 330; Bieckart, 2015:
924)—which does not necessarily entail adopting the opposition between ‘‘conso-
lidated’’ and ‘‘non-consolidated’’ democracies and its teleological and ethnocentric
assumptions (O’Donnell, 1996, 2002; Cheliotis and Xenakis, 2016). Following the
work of Guillermo O’Donnell (2001: 9–12), I consider it is necessary to overcome
the ‘‘Schumpeterian’’ and ‘‘minimalist’’ definitions of democracy that regard it only
as a political regime related to free and fair elections of the authorities and the
effective exercise and protection of political rights. When defining what democracy
is, it is essential to include not only political citizenship but also civil and social
citizenship (O’Donnell, 1999: 331; 2001: 28)—a ‘‘democracy of citizens’’ and not a
mere ‘‘democracy of voters’’ (O’Donnell, 2007: 7). In this direction, we must con-
sider the variable capacity of the agents to exercise their civil and social rights and
the variable effectiveness of mechanisms to protect and guarantee them—the degree
of development of a ‘‘democratic rule of law’’ with its various instances of ‘‘hor-
izontal accountability’’—as a crucial element to distinguish different qualities and
types of democracy (O’Donnell, 1999: 323–328; 2004). Political democratization
can be combined with a low level of civil and social democratization. That would
be a ‘‘democracy of low intensity citizenship’’ (O’Donnell, 1993: 1361; 1999: 329,
2001: 27, 2004: 42, 2007: 8). In turn, it is empirically evident that the exercise of civil
and social citizenship becomes less extended and developed in contexts marked by
higher levels of inequality and poverty (O’Donnell, 1996, 330; 2001: 27; 2004: 39;
2007: 8)—even when it is necessary to recognize that these two elements are not
identical, but go dialectically ‘‘hand in hand’’ (O’Donnell, 1993: 1361, 1999: 331–
335). In this sense, it is possible to make sense of a differentiation between a ‘‘thin
democracy’’ and a ‘‘deep democracy,’’ while at the same time recognizing inter-
mediate positions between these two extremes (Beckett and Godoy, 2008: 140–141).
Back to the Argentine case, one might think that the first moment of the transi-
tion to democracy was marked by a clear effort of expansion of citizenship.
Undoubtedly, this was a gradual process not only in the political field—conjuring
the risk of relapse into an authoritarian regime—but also, albeit to a more limited
extent, in the civil and social fields. This first phase was guided by a trend towards
deep democracy in the terms outlined above. During this stage, key dimensions of
punitiveness experienced some containment. It does not seem accidental that it was
also the time when there was an attempt to prosecute and punish crimes of the state
during the last military dictatorship, in the name of the protection of human rights
and fighting against state excesses—even if later on it was also truncated.
318 Punishment & Society 18(3)

By contrast, with the development of the neoliberal reforms and their devastat-
ing effects in terms of poverty and inequality, political democracy was combined
with an extremely strong deterioration of civil and social citizenship. This ‘‘thin
democracy’’ was correlated with a strong increase in punitiveness, extending the
degrading and exclusionary effects of the penal system—which, in turn, were made
more intense—to a wider group of social marginality, following its perennial selec-
tive logic. Again, it does not seem to be a coincidence that over those years, there
was a consolidation of a policy of oblivion and impunity for state crimes during the
last military dictatorship.
From 2003 onwards, under the rise of a post-neoliberal governmental alliance
and the economic recovery and its impact on the reduction of poverty and inequal-
ity—evident and generally acknowledged until 2007, but more contested and
debated thereafter (Kessler, 2014: 59–113)—it is possible to identify a new effort
to deepen democracy, in terms of civil and social citizenship, even with its limits in
various areas and subject to political struggles, inside and outside the governmental
alliance. In this context, the trend towards increasing punitiviness was not reverted,
but was more limited in its reach. Between 2003 and 2013, the incarceration rate in
the country grew 8% and 11% in the Province of Buenos Aires, the federal prison
population increased 6% but sentence rate decreased 19%—even if its severity
grew in different dimensions. Again, it does not seem accidental that in this context,
the prosecution and punishment of crimes of the state during the last military
dictatorship were successfully resumed.25
In addition to the important issue of the impact of the transition from an
authoritarian regime to a democratic one on the penal field, this exercise raises a
number of interesting questions about the potential connection between punish-
ment and various types of democracy, according to their quality, not only regard-
ing political citizenship but also, and especially, civil and social citizenship. If a
‘‘deep democracy’’ entails a ‘‘wager on the dignity and autonomy of individuals’’
(Bieckart, 2015: 924; O’ Donnelll, 2001: 19–25), it can be expected that the level and
form of punitiveness would be moderate in such context, and vice versa, in ‘‘thin
democracies’’ they could be expected to be excessive. Such questions could be
researched in a diachronic way by analyzing the process of democratization in a
national case, as we have done it. But also, they lend themselves to being addressed
in a comparative way, considering various national scenarios. In any case, this is
another set of possibilities that makes the relationship between democratization,
politics, and punishment even more complex.

Notes
1. Anticipated, to some extent, in Godoy’s precedent work (2005a, 2005b).
2. On other national contexts, see Medina-Ariza (2006: 186) and Hobson (2013: 7).
3. For previous explorations of this feature in contexts of the Global North, see Ryan
(1999: 1–6; 2003: 13–16, 20–21), Johnston (2000: 161–162), Garland (2001: 37, 50–
51), Sparks and Loader (2004: 19–20); Loader (2006: 563).
Sozzo 319

4. The marginality of ‘‘street crime’’ in the public and political debate was strongly
linked to the almost total predominance of the military question—the need to
confront the military threat of a new coup d’ etat, specifically related with the
prosecution and punishment of crimes of the state during the last dictatorship—
and the economic question—mounting foreign debt burden and rising inflation.
However, there was a very significant increase in officially recorded crime rates in
the country—85% for homicide rate and 70% for property crimes rate between
1983 and 1989 (Kessler, 2010: 71–74; Sozzo, 2011: 6–8).
5. This great influence of the Executive Branch on the design of penal initiatives—
even when they involve legal reforms—is a permanent feature, linked to the strong
presidentialism of Argentine democracy originated in the 19th century constitu-
tions, and reinforced by a political tradition that promotes ‘‘decisionist’’ and ‘‘per-
sonalistic’’ leaderships (Svampa, 2005: 57–61).
6. The first democratic governmental alliance did not have the strength to launch
prison and police reform initiatives, although they could be compatible with
their political program that promoted other priorities related to the military and
economic questions—with the important exception of the legal prohibition of the
involvement of Armed Forces in the ‘‘internal security affairs’’ in 1988 (Kessler,
2010: 78).
7. It is difficult to evaluate the evolution of other dimensions of punitiveness. The
excessive use of force by police forces in their everyday practices—under different
forms, from extralegal executions to tortures in police stations, and as legacies of
their remote and recent past—it is well documented, although there are no statis-
tical indicators for this period (Chevigny, 1995: 181–202; Oliveira and Tiscornia,
1990; Zaffaroni, 1993: 42–46).
8. In some Argentinean provinces there were—and are—detained persons, prosecuted
or even convicted, in police stations. There was a significant number in these
provinces at the time but we lack official information about it. The incarceration
data officially produced in Argentina did not—and does not—include these prison-
ers, deflating its real level.
9. At the same time, in the field of crimes of the state during the last military dictator-
ship, President Menem, in the name of ‘‘national reconciliation,’’ completed the
reversion of the modest achievements made at the beginning of the transition to
democracy through the pardons of 1989 and 1990.
10. Between 1989 and 1995, the officially registered property crime rate decreased
moderately (13%), contrary to what had happened during the first democratic
government. However, in 1995 property crime rate was 49% higher than at the
end of the military dictatorship. There was a slight decrease in homicide rate, but
the level of 1995 was 71% higher than in 1983.
11. Those experts’ theoretical orientations—as well as their political affinities—were in
many cases different from those that prevailed in the previous moment, oriented
toward more conservative positions.
12. For other contexts, see O’Malley (1999: 185–192; 2004: 187–188).
320 Punishment & Society 18(3)

13. The Alianza political actors were also echoing—although very superficially—some
rhetorical changes of center-left political parties in the Global North during the
1990s, like New Labourists. For the Spanish case, see Medina-Ariza (2006: 193).
14. With the partial and contingent exceptions of the provincial contexts in which there
had been attempts to produce structural reforms of police institutions in the second
half of the 1990s—Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Mendoza—that were completely
aborted after the 1999 change of national and provincial governments (Sain,
2008; Sozzo, 2005).
15. However, victimization surveys by the national government in the City of Buenos
Aires and in the Greater Buenos Aires—part of the provincial jurisdiction—avail-
able for the period 1997/2002 show that victimization rates were stable, although in
a very high level: from 42% to 40% and from 44% to 42%, respectively.
16. There was some evidence produced by public opinion surveys—with all its meth-
odological limits (Beckett and Sasson, 2001: 126–127; Roberts et al., 2003: 22–
24)—which revealed a growth of public concern about crime since mid-1990s
(Lorenc, 2003: 33).
17. This figure was completely transformed in Argentine political culture: from the
‘‘victim of the powerful,’’ crucial in the consolidation of human rights movements
in Argentina during the 1980s and 1990s, to the ‘‘victim of insecurity’’ or the
‘‘victim of street crime’’ (Gutiérrez, 2010: 63; Kessler and Grimson, 2005: 175–
176; Schillagi, 2009). On the importance of victims’ movements in the emergence
of penal populism in contexts of the Global North, see (Garland, 2001: 11–12;
Pratt, 2007: 18–19; Gottshalk, 2006: 77–114; 2013a: 234–236).
18. However, officially registered property crime rate in the country decreased by 23%
between 2002 and 2005. This reduction doubled in Buenos Aires Province (54%).
The rate of homicides decreased in Argentina by 40%, and to an even greater extent
in Buenos Aires Province (54%). Victimization surveys produced by the national
government in the City of Buenos Aires and Greater Buenos Aires available for this
period show that the victimization rate decreased significantly from 40% to 29%
and 42% to 33%, respectively, which coincides with trends observable in official
statistics. This is another example of how crime trends can be completely discon-
nected from the emergence of tough on crime rhetoric and measures.
19. The exception was the Antiterrorist Law, sanctioned in 2007, a problematic initia-
tive of symbolic, rather than practical effects, supported by Kirchnerism following
pressures from international organizations and the US government.
20. Poverty decreased from 57.3% in 2002 to 15.3% in 2007—but methodological
changes in this indicator’s construction in official statistics produced academic
and political debates. Unemployment declined from 21.5% in 2002 to 6.4% by
2007.
21. Arguably, the declining evolution of crime rates may have played a role. The trends
observed between 2002 and 2005—see note 20—continued in the next two years.
Between 2002 and 2007, officially registered property crime rate declined by 18%
and homicide rate by 44% in the country. Victimization rates in Buenos Aires City
Sozzo 321

and Greater Buenos Aires decreased in this period: from 40% to 24% and from
42% to 29%, respectively.
22. This did not imply that Kirchnerism abandoned completely its progressive rhetoric
on these topics in these situations.
23. Unfortunately, there is no official information about crime rates in Argentina
available since 2010, so it is impossible to see its evolution.
24. This is a very interesting example of the relevance of sub-national politics in federal
states in the processes of penal change—as it was pointed out for the US case in the
recent literature (for example, Barker, 2009).
25. In any case, the kind of ‘‘more process oriented analysis’’ (Beckett and Godoy,
2008: 156) that this exploration of the Argentine case presents, shows a more
complex picture than the simple ‘‘paradoxical coincidence’’ between ‘‘somewhat
successful movements of democratization and increasing punitive rhetoric and
practice’’ (Beckett and Godoy, 2008: 143) because it introduces the questions of
sequence and the diverse forms and degrees of democratization.

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Máximo Sozzo is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at National University

of Litoral (Argentina). He is Adjunct Professor of the School of Justice at
Queensland University of Technology (Australia). His work in recent years has
focused on the sociology of penal changes in Latin America and the history of
criminology and criminal justice in Argentina.