Hoy el delito se ha transformado en un riesgo social. Un riesgo: porque la configuración de la responsabilidad penal ya no puede ser prevista más de manera absoluta y a priori, sino que se presenta como un dato incierto, cuando de mera suerte; y porque ella depende, cada vez con mayor frecuencia, de factores diversos de la comisión culpable de una conducta lesiva. Aunque conservando las tradicionales semblanzas formales de una libre elección subjetiva, el delito se encamina progresivamente a fundarse sobre factores que son (en gran parte) independientes del individuo, esto es, sobre factores que el individuo – hasta el mejor – no está en condiciones de dominar o de controlar. En otras palabras, la máscara del delito tiene una impronta moral: el delito aparece como la libre y (por tanto) reprochable elección individual de un comportamiento cargado de disvalor ético y/o social. Pero el verdadero rostro del delito es, hoy amoral: moral o socialmente neutro, prescinde de categorías de valor y su ejecución está dominada por la casualidad. Filippo Sgubbi

Hoy vivimos en una sociedad de riesgos, nada nuevo en la historia de la humanidad, pero nuestras sociedades complejas de hoy los multiplican. Contamos con tecnolog¡as sofisticadas aplicadas a la seguridad y, sin embargo, la sociedad se siente m s insegura que nunca. Y de ah¡, surge el peligro de considerar la seguridad como ideolog¡a, como mito y en la lucha por alcanzarla se puede caer en la p rdida de libertades, pasando previamente por la desafecci¢n al sistema y al abandono de valores poniendo en peligro la garant¡a de los derechos humanos.

This groundbreaking work examines Latin America's prison crisis and the failure of mass incarceration policies. As crime rates rose over the past few decades, policy makers adopted incarceration as the primary response to public outcry. Yet, as the number of inmates increased, crime rates only continued to grow. Presenting new cross-national data based on extensive surveys of inmates throughout the region, this book explains the transformation of prisons from instruments of incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation to drivers of violence and criminality. Bergman and Fondevila highlight the impacts of internal drug markets and the dramatic increase in the number of imprisoned women. Furthermore, they show how prisons are not isolated from society - they are sites of active criminal networks, with many inmates maintaining fluid criminal connections with the outside world. Rather than reducing crime, prisons have become an integral part of the crime problem in Latin America.

Latin American history—the stuff of wars, elections, conquests, inventions, colonization, and all those other events and processes attributed to adults—has also been lived and partially forged by children. Taking a fresh look at Latin American and Caribbean society over the course of more than half a millennium, this book explores how the omission of children from the region's historiography may in fact be no small matter. Children currently make up one-third of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean, and over the centuries they have worked, played, worshipped, committed crimes, and fought and suffered in wars. Regarded as more promising converts to the Christian faith than adults, children were vital in European efforts to invent loyal subjects during the colonial era. In the contemporary economies of Latin America and the Caribbean—where 23 percent of people live on a dollar per day or less—the labor of children may spell the difference between survival and starvation for millions of households. Minor Omissions brings together scholars of history, anthropology, religion, and art history as well as a talented young author who has lived in the streets of a Brazilian city since the age of nine. The book closes with the prophetic dystopian tale "The Children's Rebellion" by the noted Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi.

The essays included in this volume provide both an assessment of key areas and current trends in sociology, specifically with regard to contemporary sociology in Latin America, as well as a collection of innovative empirical studies. The volume serves as an effective bridge of communication allowing sociological academies to mobilize and disseminate research dynamics from Latin America to the rest of the world.