During the last two decades, crime, the criminalization process, and criminals have become stars of Latin American social history. A brief look at recent books shows the growing presence of hustlers, inmates, policemen, and pettifoggers. This important change, however, offers a weakness: the role of institutions and of the men and women who are part of them. Osvaldo Barreneche has perceived these lacunae in his study of the emergence of the modern penal system in the city of Buenos Aires from the creation of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata (1776) until the promulgation of the national constitution (1853). His interpretative path tries to complement traditional, institution-centered legal history with the more modern and social history concern with subaltern actors in order to understand the different levels of the penal system.
The key hypothesis of Dentro de la ley is that the main features of Buenos Aires’ modern judicial...
