Economic Sanctions as State Crime: Empire, Law and the United States’ Economic Warfare in Latin America

Abstract This paper argues that US unilateral economic and financial sanctions on Latin American countries constitute state crime. Although critical scholarship on sanctions has shown that these coercive measures contravene international law and harm the populations of targeted countries, criminological scholarship has neglected the analysis of sanctions. Focusing on sanctions as structural violence, this paper explores how the power dynamics in imposing unilateral sanctions on Latin America align with understandings of state crimes and imperialism. The paper engages with the theoretical frameworks of state crime and the criminology of empire, provides an overview of US unilateral sanctions on Latin American countries, and suggests a research agenda for studying economic sanctions as state crime.