The Weight of Empire

Abstract

Abstract During the last two decades, Latin American scholars have shown an increasing interest in the region’s crime control fields as an object of study. Nonetheless, the analysis of crime, violence, and social control in Latin America is still marginal in Global North discussions. In the cases that Global North criminologists acknowledge the Global South, it is often depicted as an imperfect realization of universal theories and laws of development. This rhetorical device marshals the assumption that Global South countries are bound to follow the path of Global North societies to reach modernity as a superior stage of development. This setup has cleared the way for the ‘standard’ perspectives and highly punitive penal policies that predominate in Latin American societies. These policies and practices are not simply the reproduction and adaptation of discourses that travel from Global North countries. Instead, they lay roots in a colonial past that is still felt in the present-day realities of many Global South countries through global hierarchical market relations, extreme forms of inequality, injustice, and violence that constitute neocolonial forms of unequal power relations. This chapter focuses on some of the most salient features of Latin American crime control during the last three decades. It discusses how these fields of crime control are deeply connected to Latin American countries’ historical trajectories and the dynamics of colonialism and neocolonialism. The latter is not just a remnant of the past but an acting force that profoundly affects the political economy of Latin American societies.