Criminalising dissent: key themes and emerging trends

This chapter outlines the contribution this volume makes to the criminological and multi-disciplinary literature on the criminalisation of protest and dissent. It documents key trends and reflects on emerging issues. In particular, we discuss concepts and dynamics that are common to many chapters and are strikingly similar around the globe; these are the ‘continuum’ of the process of criminalisation and the complex ‘infrastructure’ of criminalisation of protest and dissent. We also discuss the implications of these dynamics for democracy and freedom, highlighting the absence of significant differences between the criminalisation of dissent and activism in long-term liberal democracies, democracies with a recent or less recent authoritarian past, hybrid or fragile democracies, and authoritarian contexts.