The fundamental principles of the classical utilitarian school characterize this trend as an administrative and legal criminology. This had two implications. On the one hand, the motives, and ultimate causes of the behavior and the unequal consequences of an arbitrary rule were ignored. On the other hand, the role of the judge was reduced to enforcing the law, while it was up to the judge to set a penalty for each offence. At the end of the nineteenth century, these principles (...) saw the gradual emergence of another punitive episteme that had emerged as a result of the colonization of the legal space by the positive sciences and etiological action programs. This was not a planned and pre-established course, but the confluence of a series of theories and programs for penal prevention that Michel Foucault summarized as the realization that the law was increasingly functioning as a norm. Now, criminality, besides being the object of scientific interest, also constitutes the indicator of a social problem and therefore its insertion in an economy of changing power. (shrink)

Este artículo se plantea un recorrido temático preciso de las principales contribuciones de Concepción Arenal en tres niveles principales de análisis: i) en el ámbito de la reforma del código penal, cuyo propósito correccionalista ofrece una visión social de la pena que busca reinsertar al delincuente; ii) en el ámbito social, conciliando y armonizando las reivindicaciones obreras con las ideas tradicionalistas; iii) y en el ámbito educativo, para ayudar a los más débiles, a los condenados por la justicia y los (...) marginados por la sociedad, entre los que incluía a la mujer. Una lucha que se libra en varios frentes, respetando siempre la estrecha relación del ámbito jurídico con el aspecto educativo, pues Concepción Arenal, al igual que los krausistas, consideraba que toda reforma debía partir de una reforma ética e interior del hombre. (shrink)