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Journal Articles & Book Chapters
Publications
Khan, O.P. (2026) ‘Southern and decolonial criminologies’, in Carlen, P. and Ayres França, L. (eds) Alternative Criminologies. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Southern and Decolonial criminologies both evolved to challenge the dominance of normative criminological scholarship, which centres and universalises Euro-American assumptions about crime and justice, reproduces colonial asymmetries of power, and marginalises other knowledges and lived realities. Developed independently rather than in opposition, these perspectives share important critiques yet advance profoundly different visions for change and the future of criminology itself..
[Read chapter → doi.org/10.4324/9781003624295-11]
Khan, O.P. (2024) ‘Judges as agents of coloniality: understanding the coloniality of justice at the pre-trial stage in Brazil’, British Journal of Criminology, 64(5).
Drawing on interviews and court observations in Rio de Janeiro, I show how judges cast themselves as crime-fighting heroes and come to tolerate violence against racialised groups. I argue that judges continue to conceptualise and operationalise justice through colonial logics, revealing ‘the coloniality of justice’.
Khan, O.P. (2023) ‘The coloniality of justice: naturalized divisions during pre-trial hearings in Brazil’, in [Aliverti, A., Carvalho, H., Chamberlen, A. and Sozzo, M.] (eds) Decolonizing the Criminal Question: Colonial Legacies, Contemporary Problems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Open Access)
Analysis of twenty-six interviews with judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and specialists in Rio de Janeiro reveals the divergent treatment accorded to those on either side of the dichotomous notions of the bandido (criminal) and the cidadão de bem (the good citizen). A thematic framework analysis leads to a discussion of the white-centred nature of citizenship and justice and how stigmatized spaces are considered criminogenic. The chapter traces how colonial white-supremacist logic has persisted in naturalizing inhumane treatment of racialized groups in the collective consciousness of the gatekeepers of justice in Brazil.
Darke, S. and Khan, O.P. (2021) ‘Coloniality, just war and carceral injustice in Brazil’, Punishment & Society, 23(5), pp. 723–740.
This paper illustrates the contemporary coloniality inherent in the carceral system from pre-trial detention through sentencing and imprisonment. It traces colonial “just war” logics from the Portuguese empire to Brazil’s prisons today.
Khan, O.P. (2021) ‘Made by men for men? In search of a gender responsive approach to men in prison’, Prison Service Journal, 257.
Argues that the progress made in gender-responsive work with women in prison should inform work with men and with non-binary people.
Khan, O. P. (2018). Introducing a gender-sensitive approach to pre-trial assessment and probation: Evaluation of an innovation in Kenya: Evaluation of an innovation in Kenya. Probation Journal, 65(2), 184-200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0264550518771167
Book reviews
Khan, O. P. (2024). Zoha Waseem, Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial Karachi. Punishment & Society, 26(2), 440-442. https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745231185739
Khan, O. P. (2023). Book Review: Carceral Communities in Latin America: Troubling Prison Worlds in the 21st Century by Sacha Darke, Chris Garces, Luis Duno-Gottberg and Andrés Antillano (eds). Theoretical Criminology, 27(2), 350-352. https://doi.org/10.1177/13624806221135959
Khan, O. P. (2020) “Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti (2020) A Southern Criminology of Violence, Youth and Policing: Governing Insecurity in Urban Brazil. New York, NY: Routledge”, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 9(2), pp. 203-205. doi: 10.5204/ijcjsd.v9i2.1544.
Policy and practice
Khan, O.P. (2019) Places of Deprivation of Liberty and Gender. [Tool 5], Gender and Security Toolkit. Geneva: DCAF, OSCE/ODIHR and UN Women.
