Crime and Globalisation Flashcards
What does globalisation refer to?
The increasing interconnectedness of societies, so what happens in one locality is shaped by distant events and vice versa
What does Castell argue about the global criminal economy?
- There is now a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion per annum. This takes a number of forms:
1. Arms trafficking
2. Trafficking in nuclear materials
3. Snuggling of illegal immigrants (the Chinese Triads make an estimated 2.5$ billion annually
4. Trafficking in women and children (often linked to prostitution/slavery. Estimated that up to 500,000 people are trafficked to western Europe annually)
5. Sex tourism
6. Trafficking in body parts (2,000 organs are taken annually from criminals in China)
7. Cyber-crimes
8. Green Crimes
9. International terrorism
10. Legal goods smuggling
11. Cultural artefacts smuggling
12. Endangered species smuggling
13. Drugs trade (worth 300-400$ billion per annum)
14. Money laundering- up to 1.5$ trillion a year
What is global risk consciousness and give an example of it?
- Where risk is seen as global rather than tied to a particular place
- Increased numbers of immigrants moving over to western countries for economic reasons/other makes westerners want to protect their borders
What is one result of the impact of the media on our country?
- Intensification of social control at a national level
- Airlines are now fined if they bring in undocumented passengers
- There is now no legal limits on how long a person may be held in immigration detention for
What does Taylor (1997) argue and from what perspective?
- He argues that globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime
- A socialist perspective
How has globalisation created crime at the poor end of the social spectrum? Taylor
- It has allowed TNC’s to switch manufacturing to low-wage countries, producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty
- Deregulation means that governments have little control over their own economies, while state spending on welfare has declined
- Marketisation has encouraged people to see themselves as individual consumers which undermined social cohesion
- LR: The increasingly materialistic culture promoted by the global media portrays success in terms of a lifestyle of consumption
How do factors such as unemployment, marketisation and deregulation lead to crime? Taylor
The lack of legitimate job opportunities destroys self-respect and drives the unemployed to look for illegitimate ones
- Los Angeles: de-industrialisation has led to the growth of drugs gangs numbering 10,000 members
How has globalisation created crime at the rich end of the social spectrum? Taylor
- The deregulation of financial markets has created opportunities for insider trading and the movement of funds around the globe to avoid taxation
- EU: has offered opportunities for fraudulent claims for subsidies, estimated at over $7 billion per annum
What are the criticisms of Taylor’s theory?
- Doesn’t explain how the changes make people behave in criminal ways
- Eg: not all poor people turn to crime
What role do Rothe and Friedrichs (2015) examine?
- The role of international financial organisations such as the international Monetary Fund and the World Bank in what they call ‘crimes of globalisation’
- These organisations are dominated by the major capitalist states: eg- the World Bank has 188 member countries but just 5 (the US, Japan, Germany, Britain and France) hold over 1/3 of the voting rights
What do Rothe and Friedrich argue that these bodies impose on poor countries as a condition for the loans they provide?
- Pro-capitalist, neo-liberal economic ‘structural adjustment programmes’
What do these programs often require? Rothe and Friedrich
They require governments to cut spending on health and education, and to privatise publicly-owned services (such as water supply), industries and natural resources
How do these programs create the conditions for crime?
- Rothe et al (2008): the programme imposed on Rwanda in the 1980’s caused mass unemployment and created the economic basis for the 1994 genocide
- Cain (2010): in some ways, the IMF and World Bank act as a ‘global state’ and while they may not break any laws, their actions can cause harm directly and indirectly
What did Hobbs and Dunningham find about the way that crime is organised?
- They found that the way crime is organised is linked to the economic changes brought by globalisation
- It involves individuals with contacts acting as a ‘hub’ around which a loose-knit network forms, composed of other individuals seeking opportunities, and often linking legitimate and illegitimate activites
What do Hobbs and Dunningham argue that these ‘hubs’ contrast with?
- These ‘hubs’ contrast with the large-scale, hierarchical ‘Mafia’-style criminal organisations of the past, such as that headed by the Kray brothers
