State crime criminology’s reliance on “crime” to analyse actions perpetrated by the very entity that defines criminality creates an inherent paradox at the heart of this sub-discipline. As I show, this paradox surfaces alongside “expansive tendencies”—also characterizing southern criminology—that continuously strive to incorporate more phenomena under criminological investigation. In that respect, my central argument is not about overcoming state-centrism per se, but rather about critiquing a specific form of state-centrism in both sub-disciplines. Drawing on Benjamin, Fanon and Mbembe to explain why confronting the Gordian knot between law and violence requires moving beyond mere terminological innovations or explorations of agency, I argue against the expansive approaches dominating both fields. Rather than pursuing ever-expanding definitions, this analysis introduces a reductive model of “repudiated violence.” This model was developed to study how Israeli violence against Palestinians is legalized. As a methodological intervention, its broader theoretical contribution concerns how expansive tendencies in criminology inadvertently reinforce the very frameworks they seek to critique. This model focuses narrowly on physical violence against those considered enemies by the state and the state’s decision to prosecute its own agents. It creates an analytical vantage point for studying the conditions making state violence possible, in Palestine and beyond. By deliberately limiting its parameters, the reductive approach avoids reinforcing legal epistemologies, instead transforming legal proceedings into relatively open archives of state violence that expose sovereignty’s underlying logic. The argument culminates in assessing how these contrasting methodological tendencies—expansive and reductive—might shape the future of southern criminology.