Women’s police stations are a distinctive innovation that emerged in postcolonial nations of the global south in the second half of the twentieth century to address violence against women. This article presents the results of a world-first study of the unique way that these stations, called Comisaría de la Mujer, prevent gender-based violence in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. One in five police stations in this Province was established with a mandate of preventing gender violence. Little is currently known about how this distinctive multidisciplinary model of policing (which includes social workers, lawyers, psychologists and police) widens access to justice to prevent gender violence. This article compares the model’s virtues and limitations to traditional policing models. We conclude that specialised women’s police stations in the postcolonial societies of the global south increase access to justice, empower women to liberate themselves from the subjection of domestic violence and prevent gender violence by challenging patriarchal norms that sustain it. As a by-product, these women’s police stations also offer women in the global south a career in law enforcement—one that is based on a gender perspective. The study is framed by southern criminology, which reverses the notion that ideas, policies and theories can only travel from the anglophone world of the global north to the global south.

The criminalisation of domestic violence during the 1970s and 1980s was lauded by feminists as a victory, as the state taking responsibility for the safety of women. The problem was that its regulation was delegated to a masculinist judicial system and its policing delegated to a militarised and masculinised police service that left victims disappointed, re-victimised or disbelieved. Our paper investigates how to re-imagine the policing of victims/survivors of gender-based violence from a women-centred perspective. Drawing on secondary and primary empirical research on women's police stations (WPS), that first emerged in Brasil in 1985 and Argentina in 1988, this paper investigates whether this model could offer an innovative remedy to the masculinised ill-equipped traditional models of policing of gender-based violence. Framed by southern theory our project reverses the notion that knowledge/policy transfer should flow from the Anglophone countries of the Global-North to the Global-South. Our project aimed to discover, firstly, how women's police stations – a unique invention of the Global-South, respond to and prevent gender-based violence and, secondly, what aspects could inform the development of new approaches to policing and prevention of gender-based violence elsewhere in the world. We conclude that this uniquely South American innovation might serve as an inspiration to Australia and elsewhere in the world struggling with the shadow pandemic of gender violence. Our paper draws on original empirical and historical research undertaken in Brasil, Argentina and Australia to offer new practical and conceptual insights into how to enhance the policing of gender-based violence.

Este trabajo busca presentar las visiones del dispositivo penal juvenil a través de la perspectiva de los operadores ejecutivos del Programa Libertad Asistida. A lo largo de las últimas décadas, en la Argentina, se han producido una serie de cambios normativos orientados a transformar la forma en la que se define la infancia y la adolescencia así como las maneras de organizar y regular las agencias gubernamentales que intervienen sobre las mismas.Este artículo pretende indagar la manera en la que esos cambios normativos impactaron en el segmento ejecutivo del dispositivo penal juvenil en la provincia de Santa Fe, Argentina. A partir de sus voces de los operadores ejecutivos del Programa Libertad Asistida, reconstruimos sus posiciones y representaciones en torno a los elementos cristalizados del dispositivo penal juvenil.

En el presente artículo nos proponemos presentar un Proyecto de Extensión de Interés Social de la Universidad Nacional del Litoral construido sobre un fuerte marco teórico que nos permitió reflexionar sobre una problemática social importante: la violencia policial. El proyecto centró la mirada en la relación entre jóvenes y fuerzas de seguridad, trabajó con más de 100 jóvenes de sectores de la ciudad de Santa Fe con altos índices de vulnerabilidad social y conjugó una iniciativa comprometida con la docencia y la investigación. Nos posibilitó, asimismo, reflexionar sobre las pautas culturales que portan estos grupos sociales y analizar cómo estas se ponen en tensión cuando interactúan en los distintos escenarios urbanos. En las vinculaciones entre jóvenes y policías se disputan sentidos y jerarquías sociales, se construyen subjetividades, se consolidan antagonismos identitarios e incluso se habilitan espacios para negociar los términos de una convivencia cotidiana en tensa calma.