Imagination in the Fight Against Impunity and Criminal Punishment

Progressive social movements have increasingly turned to punishment as a central means of addressing rights violations and achieving justice. In Latin America, we have seen this punitive imagination colonize critical social movements such as the human rights movement and the feminist movement, both of which have increasingly narrowed their aspirations to demands for prosecution and punishment. Globally, we see this phenomenon in the institutional and political development of international criminal law.

Professor Rocio Lorca will speak to her argument in light of this, finding that the turn to punishment is not primarily the result of a vindictive inclination or a strong belief in the ability of punishment to prevent harm, but rather the result of what has become a very narrow view of what impunity is and how we can address it.