Essay #122: Alejandro Forero Cuéllar, ‘Anarchism and the Abolition of the Criminal Justice System’

In this essay, Alejandro Forero examines how bourgeois criminology weaponized positivist science to pathologize dissent, pseudoscientifically labeling anarchists as "born criminals" to justify state repression and legal exclusion. In response, Spanish anarchists repurposed evolutionary theory to propose the total abolition of prisons, advocating for a society rooted in mutual aid, rational education, and the elimination of the social inequalities that breed crime. Alejandro Forero is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Barcelona. His most recent publications on the topic are: (2025) Anarchism and the Abolition of the Criminal Justice System: The Struggle for the Discourse on Evolution and Social Order in Spain., in Envisioning Abolition (edited by David Scott and Emma Bell), and 2023 “The new man and the abolition of punishment: Hulsman’s approach and its similarities with the anarchist tradition” in Pain in Vain: Challenging the Penal System, Towards the Abolition of Punishment: On the Legacies of Louk Hulsman. Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Bluesky @anarchismresgroup.bsky.social Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Artwork by Sam G.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published May 25, 2026

Embed this episode

Attribution link and audio player

NOW PLAYING

Essay #122: Alejandro Forero Cuéllar, ‘Anarchism and the Abolition of the Criminal Justice System’

0:00 15:59

1×

No transcript for this episode yet

We transcribe on demand. Request one and we'll notify you when it's ready — usually under 10 minutes.

Share this episode

Similar Episodes

No similar episodes found.

Similar Podcasts

NB:arrangement Nasjonalbiblioteket Opptak av Nasjonalbiblioteketes arrangementer. Foredrag, panelsamtaler, essays med mer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Rationality: From AI to Zombies Eliezer Yudkowsky What does it actually mean to be rational? The kind of rationality where you make good decisions, even when it's hard; where you reason well, even in the face of massive uncertainty; where you recognize and make full use of your fuzzy intuitions and emotions, rather than trying to discard them. In Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Eliezer Yudkowsky explains the science underlying human irrationality with a mix of fables, argumentative essays, and personal vignettes. These eye-opening accounts of how the mind works (and how, all too often, it doesn't) are then put to the test through some genuinely difficult puzzles: questions in computer science about the future of artificial intelligence (AI), questions in physics about the relationship between the quantum and classical worlds, questions in philosophy about the metaphysics of zombies and the nature of morality, and many more.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is this episode of Anarchist Essays?

This episode is 15 minutes long.

When was this Anarchist Essays episode published?

This episode was published on May 25, 2026.

Can I download this Anarchist Essays episode?

Yes. Use the download control on the episode player to save the publisher-provided media file.

URL copied to clipboard!