Abstract

ARAYA-MORENO, JAVIERA. Where is the Criminal Policy? How to Study it? Criminal Law and Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon Socio-Legal Studies. Estud. Socio-Juríd [online]. 2021, vol.23, n.2, pp.101-129.  Epub July 14, 2022. ISSN 0124-0579.  https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/sociojuridicos/a.9437.

The article reviews scholarly literature in Anglo-Saxon socio-legal studies with the objective of methodologically and analytically placing the criminal policy in the context of empirical research. A non-exhaustive, and deliberately partial, review of classic and recent studies in the law & society tradition, structured around the way in which these studies address law in general, criminal law in particular, and daily life as the privileged "site" for observation, allows for the identification of three analytical hints. First, that the criminal policy can be located in the sphere of what has been called "law-in-action". Second, that having access to the criminal policy involves moving away from normative and structuralist conceptions of law, which attribute it a certain function or objective. Third, that studying the criminal policy just as it is deployed in the daily lives of legal agents and of people under the jurisdiction of law requires to question the distinction between law and society as one that would define discrete observation spheres and, instead, to focus on the study of practices.

Keywords : Sociology of law; criminal policy; law and society; daily life.

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