Queer criminology and the global South: Setting queer and Southern criminologies into dialogue

The growth of ‘Queer Criminology’ in recent years has seen greater attention being paid to the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people by criminal justice agents and institutions. While this work has developed across both the global North (the UK and the USA) and South (Australia), its epistemological, conceptual, and political foundations remain firmly situated in the global North. The more recent emergence of Southern criminology, then, offers important tools with which to reflect on the extent to which Queer criminology mirrors the epistemological and political concerns of the global North, and the implications of this for those in the global South. This chapter begins the task of drawing together these two fields. It first uses critiques drawn from the global South to examine the ways that Queer criminology reflects ‘Northern’ LGBT and Queer frameworks. It then explores the implications of transposing initiatives that may provide positive outcomes for LGBTQ people in the global North, such as community policing, into the global South without fully accounting for key differences in these contexts