About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Crítica Penal y Poder (hereafter CPyP) is an online journal issued by the Observatory on the Penal System and Human Rights (OSPDH) of the University of Barcelona. In view of this, its Editorial and Steering Committees are composed of OSPDH members.

CPyP is aimed at researchers, students, professionals, lawyers engaged in disciplines and fields of knowledge inherent to the Constitutional State, the penal system, criminology, and social sciences in general.

CPyP publishes different types of materials and documents. On the one hand, it builds on the output of several research branches within the same OSPDH and, in this sense, it is a publishing space for OSPDH's own productions.

On the other hand, CPyP publishes articles thematically linked to the Criminal Justice System, with a particular emphasis on its dimension of power practice, as well as a tool of political, economic and cultural domination.

In this respect, CPyP aims to take up a longstanding critical tradition in the field of social sciences, whose roots lie in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and set the groundwork for the gradual construction of a Sociology of criminal control.

This means that the sources of such cultural legacies span across several decades, biographies, as well as different geographical and cultural spaces in which they unfolded. It is worth pointing out, in this regard, the fundamental ongoing collaboration with colleagues and friends from several European and Latin-American universities, linked to us by strong working ties.  

Peer Review Process

Evaluation and selection of submissions

In order to submit new manuscripts to Crítica Penal y Poder, the authors need to register and log in to their personal area. Furthermore, they have to comply with the general and specific publication guidelines. 

The submissions undergo an anonymous evaluation process carried out by two external specialists (double blind peer review) who, after reviewing the papers, elaborate a confidential motivated report and recommend the acceptance, revision or rejection of the work. This review will be blind to ensure the neutrality of the evaluation process.

In order to decide on the acceptance, rejection or the recommendation for amendments, the referees will pay particular attention to the originality and relevance of the topic, as well as the quality of the scientific methodology and the compliance with the authors' guidelines established by CPyP. In case of disagreement between the two external evaluators, the CPyP editorial committee will request a third referee's review. Under exceptional and urgent circumstances, the Edition Committee may request some of its members to carry out article reviewing tasks.

The confidential reports written by the external evaluators will be sent to the authors, who will be notified about the acceptance, rejection or the proposal for amendments, with the Editor-in-chief's Team being the one making the final decision about the publication of the submission.

The journal also has an Open Section aimed at hosting reviews, translations and contributions by invitated authors. The journal will include in this section articles and materials considered particularly relevant for their value, even when previously published and, therefore, not requiring external evaluation.

Publication Frequency

Biannual (November and May).

Due to the general situation following the pandemic and the ensuing uncertainty of academic calendars worldwide, only one issue per year was possible in 2021 and 2022. From 2023, the biannual frequency will be reinstated.

Open Access Policy

Crítica Penal y Poder provides free access upon publication to the full texts of all its contents.

Once published, the authors can post a copy of their articles in their websites and Institutional repositories, as long as the original source is cited.

Presentation of the journal

Epistemologies on the criminal question

The forms of knowledge about what has been called 'the criminal question' have been multiple and, to a certain extent, antagonistic. Various readings and interpretations of history have promoted confrontational gnosiologies.  The majority of nineteenth-century approaches tackled crime-related issues from an aetiological perspective, which translated a binary conception of society (criminals and non-criminals, the healthy and the sick, the honest and the dishonest, friends and enemies). Their point was therefore to shape disciplines allegedly unraveling the individual root causes of the criminal phenomenon (provided with an ontological consistency) and designing the best tools for its control and punishment. Racist impulses fuelled the ideology of "social defence" and culminated in the creation of criminal sciences corresponding to this ideological function. Criminology, criminal law, criminal policy and penology thus constituted a supposedly scientific corpus oriented towards the defence of society. The notion of progress was inextricably associated with such a modern project and the moral progress of humanity and civilisation seemed unquestionable in its abandonment of pre-modern, pre-Illustrated barbarism. The law-making process, the consolidation of the criminal legal professions and, ultimately, the establishment of bureaucracies called to bring order administration and stability, should promote the stable advancement and rational development of social and political organisations.

On the other hand, however, the Holocaust certified the failure of that project and revealed the extent to which the creation of bureaucracies and the role of power were decisive for genocide.

While this was happening, those who were later known as the "Frankfurt School" pretended to warn (unsuccessfully) that everything would have been consumed by that fire. As Benjamin pointed out, history was built on those rubble and corpses, and the notion of progress was thus a to-be-challenged one. Later, Horkheimer and Adorno revealed the dialectic in which the Enlightenment project grounded, highlighting its (partial) failure. Since then, state activity and the role of bureaucracies, far from promoting the certainty and stability, mutated into a profound questioning in the face of the revelation that within their bureaucratic and routine folds can be found the production of evil (as Arendt illuminatingly revealed).

This new understanding also affected, and especially, the field of penalistic knowledge. The real epistemological revolution took place when the object of study of what was traditionally known as criminology shifted from crime to crime control. As Baratta and Bergalli were able to point out, a new way of approaching the criminal question had been inaugurated and, through it, for the first time the processes of creation of criminal law (static penal system) or the conformation and action of police, judicial and penitentiary agencies (dynamic penal system) would be examined. It is clear that the discipline was no longer the same, the object of study had shifted from the uomo delinquente to the penal system. This new epistemology, which has already been in existence for several decades and which has shaped a new body of knowledge, is the basis for the editorial project presented here.

A new editorial project

Crítica penal y poder (hereinafter, CPyP), is an electronic publication of the Observatory of the Penal System and Human Rights of the University of Barcelona (hereinafter, OSPDH). In this sense, both its Steering, Editorial and Editorial Committees are made up of members of the OSPDH.

CPyP publishes different types of materials and documents. On the one hand, it draws on the work produced by the different Research Areas of the OSPDH and, in this sense, publishes the OSPDH's own productions. On the other hand, CPyP publishes substantive articles that are thematically linked to the objects of study related to the criminal question in its special connection with the dimension of power and political, economic and cultural domination. In this sense, as mentioned above, CPyP gathers and aims to adapt a long critical tradition which, in the field of social sciences, originated in the purest critical theory of the Frankfurt School and which, later on, was cemented in the gradual construction of a sociology of penal control. This means that the "sources" that have nourished such cultural currents are broad in time, in the biographies of their founders and in the geographical and cultural spaces in which they have developed. Indeed, mention must be made here of colleagues and friends from various universities in Europe and Latin America with whom we maintain strong ties of joint work and research along the same lines mentioned above.

Among the former, and closely linked to the holding of a core activity of the OSPDH, the Official Master's Degree in Criminology and Criminal Law Sociology, it is worth mentioning that it is organised within the University of Barcelona, as a space for research-oriented postgraduate education, with the collaboration of teaching staff from different universities in Catalonia (University of Lleida, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Rovira i Virgili and Ramon Llull) as well as from the European Union (Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Netherlands, University of Bologna and University of Bologna); University of Bologna and University of Padova, Italy; Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, University of Gent, Belgium; Laboratory of Criminal Sciences, University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece; Centre for Crime and Conflict Research, Middlesex University, England; and University of Hamburg, Germany). The current version of the aforementioned Master's course has its origins in another course founded and directed by Roberto Bergalli until 2006, which, in turn, was part of the Common Study Programme on Criminal Justice and Critical Criminology. This European programme of studies in Criminology was agreed more than twenty-five years ago with the aforementioned European university centres. In these initiatives lies the true origin of this line of university work, critical and committed to the social reality from which it draws and aims to contribute knowledge.

On the other hand, the creation of the Observatory of the Penal System and Human Rights (OSPDH) in 2001, as a Recognised Research Centre of the University of Barcelona, gave a new impulse to applied research committed to the promotion of a culture of human rights. All information on the OSPDH, the Master's Degree and the Doctoral Programme in Political and Legal Sciences can be consulted in this electronic journal.

It must be said that, along with all that is linked to the European sphere, the activities of the OSPDH have maintained strong links with similar teams, research groups and universities in Latin America since its creation and up to the present day. This has led to a permanent exchange of young students, teachers and researchers who have come to the University of Barcelona to study some of the different courses mentioned over the last three decades. Today we can affirm the existence of strong productive relations with colleagues from Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Montevideo, Santiago de Chile, Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Caracas, Bogotá, Cali, Barranquilla, Asunción, Lima, Mexico City and San José de Costa Rica. In all these cities, groups, networks, research centres and numerous initiatives related to the aforementioned areas have been created.

This means that the CPyP electronic journal aims, on the one hand, to continue with the entire critical corpus produced over the course of decades. On the other hand, the use of new technologies in this case also aims to build a bridge that brings together and disseminates the elaboration of a type of knowledge that resists the pan-penalist temptations so typical of the convulsive times in which we live. We encourage you to join in this cultural adventure and we hope for the participation as authors and readers of all those who consider it pertinent and important to strengthen a type of knowledge such as the one described here.

Iñaki Rivera Beiras (director)

Editor-in-Chief's Team: Rodrigo Chaverra Agudelo; Lucía Sbriller Girardin; Maia Giancarelli Rivoira; Carlo Gatti; Juan Manuel Ternero Martín.

Declaration of publishing ethics and best practices

Crítica Penal y Poder subscribe the Declaration of publishing ethics and best practices for scientific journals published by the University of Barcelona.

The University of Barcelona promotes the open access publication of digital journals and undertakes to ensure rigorous and high-quality scientific knowledge. The University is also committed to guaranteeing that  the publishing process abides by the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It is therefore essential that all of the involved stakeholders — journal editors, reviewers, technical editors and authors— know and act according to the principles of the Code.

• Journal editors should:

- ensure that the decision on whether to publish an article or not is independent on the author’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, country of origin, citizenship or political beliefs;

- publish updated guidelines on the authors' responsibilities, the submission requirements, the arbitration system and the evaluation criteria to be applied by the reviewers;

- publish corrections, clarifications and apologies whenever necessary, and not to make use of any submission for UB-specific research purposes without the author’s consent;

- guarantee the confidentiality during the review process, which implies: (a) the anonymity of both the reviewers and authors and the confidentiality of the content of the articles, the reviewers' reports, and any other communication from or to the editorial, consultant and scientific committees;   (b) the confidentiality in the correspondence between the author and the journal committees or reviewers in case the author asks for clarification or complains against a referee's review or an editorial decision;

- ensure the integrity of articles that have been published;

- remove from the journal or prevent the publication of any article found to plagiarise other sources. In these cases, the journal will act as swiftly as possible.

• Authors should

- understand that they are responsible for all submitted content;

- notify the journal editors about relevant errors in their published articles so that the appropriate adjustments can be made;

- guarantee that the article and enclosed materials are original and do not infringe the copyright of third-parties.

In case of co-authorship, the corresponding author needs to notify the Editorial Committee that all the co-authors agree that the final version is published in the journal. 

Consequences of bad practice: in case of non-compliance with this Code of ethics and good conduct related to research and publication of original contributions, any already published article will be removed.  

 

• Reviewers and technical editors should

- carry out objective, informed, critical, constructive and unbiased reviews. The acceptance or rejection must be based solely on the work’s relevance, originality, and compliance with the style and content guidelines established in the editorial criteria;

- meet deadlines and promptly inform the journal editor when not possible;

- avoid sharing, spreading or reproducing any information from articles still under review without permission from the journal editors and corresponding authors.