Chapter 5 and 6 Flashcards
What is government?
The entity that produces, implements, and administers a society’s laws.
We must distinguish among those governmental or political actions…
- Prohibited by the state’s laws
- Those defined as criminal by international law
- Those regarded as criminal on some other criteria of harmfulness not necessarily recognized by either the state’s laws or international law
When does prosecution of state crime and political white collar crime may involve some unique difficulties?
When the accused are part of the lawmaking and enforcement apparatus
What is perhaps the broadest charge associated with governmental crime?
Abuse of Power
When does abuse of power occur?
When the state assumes and exercises power it ought not to have
What is the second basic concept associated with governmental crime?
Corruption
What does corruption most typically involve?
The misuse of political office for material advantage, although it encompasses acts undertaken for political advantage.
What has corruption been applied to narrowly?
- The violation of specific laws
- Typically for some form of payment
- More loosely as deviation from ideal or expected patterns of behavior
What is probably the activity most closely associated with political corruption?
Bribery
What is anarchism?
The state is inherently aggressive and fundamentally unnecessary
What had been even more destructive than imperialistic endeavors?
Waging of war
What does jus post bellum mean?
Justice after war
What has been identified as war crimes
- The use of poisonous gases
- Biological and chemical weapons
- Nuclear weapons
- Mines
- Indiscriminate attacks against civilians
- Carpet bombing
- Collateral damage to civilian targets
- Gratuitous attacks on dams, dikes, waterworks, and nuclear stations
- Wanton destruction of property and theft
- Enslavement
- Forced labor
- Enforced prostitution
- Systematic rape
- Hostage taking
- Genocidal actions
- Use of death squads to murder civilians
- Reprisal killings
- Collective punishment
- Use of child soldiers
- Mistreatment of prisoners of war
What has been widely condemned as criminal by many people all over the world?
U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War
What are the specific accusations of illegality by U.S. forces?
- Use of napalm during air strikes
- Chemical warfare
- Torture of prisoners
- Burning of villages
- Illegal detention of civilians
- Bombing of hospitals and dikes
- Moral corruption
- Sabotage of the Vietnamese economy
What was the My Lai Massacre?
504 Vietnamese men, women, and children were killed by Lt. William Calley and his troops in 1968.
What are the more recent U.S. military ventures?
- Invasions of Grenada and Panama
- Mining of Managua (Nicaragua) harbor
- Gulf War against Iraq
- Participation in the NATO action
- Actions in Afghanistan in 2002 as part of war against terrorism
- “Operation Iraqi Freedom”
What may be the single most prominent case of a state widely labeled as criminal because its criminality was virtually its defining feature?
Nazi Germany
What is genocide?
Crimes against humanity/killing your own kind
What happened during the regime of Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge?
2 million Cambodian urbanites, members of the intelligentsia, and others murdered
What is perhaps the single most dramatic, fully documented, and extreme case of genocide ever?
The Holocaust by the Nazis during WWII
What elicited little attention from the United States or other countries?
The alleged killing of between 300-400,000 people in the Darfur region of Sudan and the displacement of some 2 million people in 2003-05
What is a repressive state?
Does not go so far as waging a formal campaign of genocide, but it is systematically deprives its citizens of fundamental human rights
When was the United Nations formed?
After WWII, partly in response to the gross and conspicuous abuse of the most fundamental human rights by the totalitarian gov’ts of the time
What is a corrupt state?
A government used as an instrument to enrich its leadership
What provides one well-documented example of a corrupt state?
The case of the Philippines led by Ferdinard Marcos
What happened in Nigeria?
Government officials are suspected of having stolen or misspent some $400 billion over the course of 4 decades
What is state negligence?
Describes a situation in which “crimes of omission” are committed. The state fails to prevent loss of human life, suffering, and deprivation that are in its power to prevent
The concept could even be extended to apply to circumstances in which the state’s finite resources are wasted on a vast scale through…
- Gross bureaucratic inefficiencies
- Negligence
- Incompetence
What did David Wyman claim?
That U.S. leaders knew about the Nazi death camps and were criminally negligent in failing to act more aggressively against the Nazis’ systematic genocide
The political leadership in the U.S. was accused of responding too slowly and ineffectively to…
The AIDS epidemic as it evolved in the 1980s
Where did AIDS first surfaced in America?
Gay community
What has been characterized as a form of state crime of omission
The U.S. government response to Hurricane Katrina in August and September of 2005
What has been attributed to the neglectful Bush administration energy policy, as well as its ill-advised war in Iraq?
The tremendous spike in oil and gas prices in 2008
What is state-organized crime?
Acts that are criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their job as reps. of the state
What has often been carried out by agents of the state on behalf of the state?
- Terrorism
2. Including assassination, torture and kidnapping
What has been described as acts of terrorism?
- The British bombing of Dresden
2. The American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII
Who carried out the original incident in the Watergate Complex?
Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) and the White House itself
What was the Iran-Contra Affair?
The sale of weapons to Iran in exchange for funds to arm and support the Contras, who were fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government
When and why was the CIA formed?
Established after WWII to prevent another Pearl Harbor and in response to the emerging “Cold War”
What were some of the violations that the CIA committed?
- Illegal opening of U.S. mail over several years
- Prohibited surveillance of various domestic dissident organizations
- Assassination plots against foreign leaders
- Unlawful stockpiling of deadly poisons and conducting dangerous, mindaltering experiments with unwritten subjects
- Complicity in the Watergate affair
- Assisting in the bribing and blackmailing of foreign leaders
Who was the legendary leader of the FBI?
J. Edgar Hoover
What was COINTELPRO?
The umbrella name for various counterintelligence programs
What did Hoover do over many decades?
Maintained secret files on public officials, a practice that amounted to an implicit, if not explicit, blackmailing scheme
What did the FBI investigate between 1981 and 1985?
100 individuals and groups opposed to the Reagan’s administration Central America policies
What did FBI director Robert Mueller admit to in 2007?
That the FBI had used the USA Patriot Act improperly to obtain information about U.S. citizens and businesses
What is the history of the police crime?
- Long and varied
- Involving violations of constitutional rights
- Excessive use of force
- Related illegal acts to fulfill state or departmental objectives
What was the Amadou Diallou case?
Shot by NYPD officers 41 times as he was reaching for his wallet while standing in a building doorway
What did the Mollen Commission report in 1994 about NYP officers?
- Frequently committed perjury
- Made searches without warrants and false arrests
- Tampered with evidence
What is testilying?
Perjury in court testimony among police
What is political white collar crime committed on?
Behalf of political parties, rather than simply for personal gain
What has most recently, especially with the advent of TV, increased exponentially?
The cost of campaigning
What became a vastly more important element in the financing of elections?
Political action committees (PACs)
What does legalized bribery do?
It not only gives incumbents an enormous financial advantage over challengers, but it has been demonstrated to influence legislator’s voting records as well
Who has used the political campaign financing system to successfully promote their interests, at a cost to taxpayers in the billion of dollars?
Defense contractors and energy company executives
What is soft-money donations?
To be used only to promote issues, not specific candidates, but it has proven quite easy to find ways to promote specific candidates through “issues-focused” advertising
Who has been accused of having profited throughout the course of his career as a businessman from family connections and sweetheart contracts, with ordinary investors or taxpayers at a disadvantage?
Former President George W. Bush
Who was formally accused of having accepted payoffs from Maryland contractors, whom he had favored as governor of that state?
Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon’s first VP
Who was accused of giving major energy company executives, including those of Enron, special access to the committee he chaired on energy policy?
VP Dick Cheney
Who resigned from office, in response to widespread disbelief in his congressional testimony in relation to the firing of the U.S. attorneys, as well as other allegations that he had placed his loyalty to President Bush?
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales
What were 3 federal judges accused of and what was their punishment?
- Tax Evasion and Impeached
- Impeached
- Soliciting a $150,000 bribe and impeached
Who pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from a for-profit juvenile correctional facility?
2 Luzerne County, PA judges
What Commissions uncovered much police corruption in NYC?
- Lexow in 1890
- Knapp in 1970
- Mollen in 1990’s
What are state-corporate crimes?
Illegal or socially injurious actions that occur when one or more institutions of political governance pursue a goal in direct cooperation with one or more institutions of economic production and distribution
Who promoted land reform for the benefit of impoverished peasants outraged the United Fruit Company, leading to a CIA led-initiative?
Guatemala president Jacobo Arbenz
What did the Challenger accident attribute to?
Failure of cheap O-ring seals
How did ValuJet cut costs?
Maintenance to a company (Sabretech) that placed an improperly inspected oxygen canister on the flight, which caught fire and exploded
Who was accused of billing the occupation authority for non existent services, or grossly inflating bills for services provided?
Custer Battles
What has been characterized as paternalistic, secretive, and counterproductive in terms of its claimed goals of improving people’s lives?
The World Bank
What has the World Bank been charged with?
- Complicity in policies with genocidal consequences
- With exacerbating ethnic conflict
- With increasing the gap between rich and poor
- With fostering immense ecological and environmental damage
- With neglecting agriculture so crucial to survival in developing countries
- With the callous displacement of vast numbers of indigenous people in these countries from their original homes and communities
What crimes are worst in government?
- Physical harm to human beings
- Abuse of civil liberties
- Economic loss
What is governmental crime?
Broad term for the whole range of crimes committed in a governmental context
What is state crime?
Denotes harmful activities carried out by the state or on behalf of some state agency
What are crimes of globalization?
Consequences of policy decisions of high-level officials of major financial institutions and government agencies who are attempting to realize positive outcomes
Who are the philosophers of human rights?
- Thomas Hobbes
- John Locke
- Charles-Louis Montesquieu
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
What were some of the repressive states (Dictatorships)?
- Shah of Iran
- Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua
- Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines
- Francois Duvalier of Haiti
What are some of the recent corrupt countries?
- Cameroon
- Nigeria
- Indonesia
- Azerbaijan
- Uzbekistan
- Ukraine
- Honduras
- Tanzania
- Yugoslavia
- Paraguay
- Kenya
What are some of the Latin America countries that face corruption?
- Peru
- Brazil
- Ecuador
- Argentina
- Paraguay
- Bolivia
- Costa Rica
- Guatemala
- Mexico
What is doing something you are prohibited from doing?
Malfeasance
What is failing to do something you are required to do?
Nonfeasance
What is performing a permissible act in an improper manner?
Misfeasance
What are examples of government wastefulness?
- Pork barrel projects
- Lax loan collection procedures
- Inefficient subsidies
- Maintenance of unnecessary military bases
What is one of the earliest forms of state-organized crime?
Piracy
What are forms of state-organized crime?
- State complicity in smuggling
- Assassinations
- Criminal conspiracies
- Spying on citizens
- Diverting funds illegally
- Selling arms to blacklisted countries
- Supporting terrorists
What have the FBI been engaging in?
- Warrantless wiretapping
2. Unauthorized domestic spying
Who have abuse of police power been directed towards?
- Minorities
- Poor
- Political dissidents
- Members of the counterculture
Who were some of the presidents that were involved in bribery?
- Eisenhower
- Johnson
- Nixon
- Ford
- Reagan
- Clinton
What were the charges that Nixon’s associates faced?
- Perjury
- Burglary
- Bribery
- Illegal surveillance
- Altering evidence
- Personal enrichment
Who milked poor Americans?
- Wealthy developers
- Private interests
- Highly paid consultants
- Influential politicians for their own benefit
What has state-corporate crime been applied to?
- Industrial fires
- Nuclear weapons production
- Oil spills
- Treaty violations
- Pre-emptive war
What groups are a conspicious dimension of contemporary globalization?
1. Transnational corporations 2 Nongovernmental organizations 3. Intergovernmental organizations 4. International financial institutions 5. Special interest groups
Examples of globalization in white collar crime are…
- The growing global dominance and reach of neoliberalism and a free market, capitalist system that disproportionately benefits wealthy and powerfuls orgs. and ind.
- The increasing vulnerability of indigenous people with a traditional way of life to the forces of globalized capitalism
- The growing influence and impact of international financial institutions
- The non-democratic operation of international financial institutions
What was formally the name of the World Bank?
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
What was the single most favored World Bank Project?
The building of dams
What are some forms of corruption in police work?
- Corruption of authority (accepting discounts)
- Kickbacks
- Opportunistic theft (of arrestees)
- Shakedowns (traffic offenders)
- Protection of illegal activities
- Fixes (of traffic tickets)
- Direct criminal activities (burglary)
- Internal payoffs (sale of work assignments)
