3.3 state crime Flashcards
How do Green and Ward define state crime?
- they are illegal/deviant activities, perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies to further state policies
How does Michalowski define state crime?
- includes not only illegal actions BUT also those legally permissable actions that have similar harmful consequences as illegal actions
- the focus is on the impact of state actions rather than the actions themselves
What kind of offences a state crimes generally?
- state sponsored terrorism
- corruption
- war crimes
- assassination
- genocide
- torture
- the illegal treatment, imprisonment, or punishment of citizens
- corrupt or criminal policing
What is the problem with defining state crime?
- the state is the source of law and itself defines what a crime is
- it therefore has the power to avoid defining its own acts as criminal
What is meant by the transgressive approach?
- involves going outside the usual boundaries of defining crime as simply law-breaking
What do Schwendinger and Schwendinger(1975) and Green and Ward(2012) suggest state crimes should be considered as?
- violations of human rights
What are human rights?
- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) established a legal framework for defining and enforcing universal human rights
- everyone, because of their common humanity is entitled to the same fair and just treatment wherever they may be in the world
How can human rights be used to describe state crime?
- human rights involves a wider package of basic social harm rather than as simply law-breaking
- things like state-induced famine, the denial of basic welfare services as a result of state corruption and other deliberate denials of basic human rights are state crimes
What is meant by genocide?
- the attempted elimination by mass murder of people belonging to a particular group
What is an example of genocide?
- Holocaust = Hitler murdered 6 million Jews in an attempt to eliminate them
- Rohingya Muslims genocide in Myanmar = since 2017, there has been ongoing persecutions of the muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar
What is meant by corruption?
- involves the organised plunder of national resources by a ruling elite
What is an example of corruption?
- the former Egyptian dictator Mubarak, who was allegedly worth around $70 billion, embezzled from Egyptian state coffers
What is meant by war crimes?
- illegal acts committed during wars, like the murder, ill-treatment, torture or deliberate targeting or enslavement of civilian populations of prisoners of war, and the plundering/looting of property
What is an example of war crimes?
- My Lai massacre = American soldiers brutally killed more than 500 women, children and elderly men in 1968 - it was covered up for a year before it was reported in the American press
What are some examples of the torture and illegal treatment/ punishment of citizens?
- the US still holds prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, who have been subjected to torture, and haven’t been charged with any offence or given a trial
- Gaddafi regime in Libya = systematic torture, disappearances and mass murder of thousands of political opponents of the regime
What is meant by state-sponsored terrorism?
- involves the state itself carrying out terrorist acts/supporting others that do
What is an example of state-sponsored terrorism?
- the US has a long history of supporting illegal rebel groups against elected regimes it regards as unfriendly, particularly in Central and South America
How did Green and Ward explain state crime?
- integrated theory = suggests that state crime arises from similar circumstances to those of other crimes, like street crimes
- it involves integrating the 3 elements of:
1. the motivations of offenders
2. opportunities to commit crime
3. failures of control
What is meant by the crimes of obedience model?
- authorisation
- dehumanisation
- routinisation
What is meant by authorisation?
- making it clear to individuals they are acting in accordance with official policy, and with explicit state authority and support
What is meant by dehumanisation?
- involves the state’s promotion of a monolithic identity
What is meant by routinisation?
- involves organising the actions in such a way that they become part of a regular routine and can be performed in a detached way that denies perpetrators the need/opportunity to raise moral questions
How do Kelman and Hamilton (1989) develop the crimes of obedience model?
- they emphasise conformity to rules not rule-breaking
- they suggest violent states encourage obedience by those who actually carry out state-backed systematic human rights abuses
How can techniques of neutralisation be used to explain state crimes?
- Cohen (2001) argues that states deny by neutralising their crimes by re-labelling them as something else
- denial of victim e.g. they are terrorists
- denial of injury e.g. they started it
- denial of responsibility e.g. I was obeying orders
- condemning the condemners e.g. they are picking on us because they are racist,etc
- appeal to higher loyalty
What are the four categories of state crime that McLaughlin identifies?
- political crimes e.g. corruption or censorship
- crimes by security e.g. genocide, torture and disappearance of dissidents
- economic crimes e.g. violation of health and safety laws
- social and cultural crimes e.g. institutional racism
How does Bauman (1989) explain state crime?
- the social conditions which produced the Holocaust included many of the feature of modern society - such as science and technology and the division of labour
- to understand the Holocaust one must understand the ability of modern society to turn mass murder into a routine administrative task
What is the cultural relativist argument?
- many post-colonial nations have been unhappy with international acceptance of norms such as the UDHR; they are too heavily influence by western values and represent Western Imperialism
What are some critiques of the cultural relativist argument?
- cultural relativism may protect less powerful states and cultures from being judged by Western standards, but it may equally protect criminal states from international condemnation and action
- marxists = cultural relativists don’t see the impact of state crime on marginalised groups
What do realists argue about state crime?
- states are more heavily committed to self-interest than to universal morality and law
- states may commite crimes/human rights abuses because of self-interest
How do feminists explain state crime?
- claim that men use terror, violence and genocide against women to undermine whole cultural groups
What do MacKinnon (1994) and Allen (1996) argue about state crime and women?
rape was used as a military policy for genocidal purposes; it leads to:
- the psychological (if not physical) death of the woman
- the social death of the woman, as she may be shunned by community
- the undermining os social bonds within a group
- ethnic cleansing
What are some criticisms of the feminist perspective?
- In Congo, UN peacekeepers were criticsed for failing to prevent rapes during teh conflict and some were ‘disciplined’ for rape and sexual assault of women and children they were supposed to be protecting
- Is rape ‘state crime’ or a male crime
