Globalisation And Crime Flashcards
Global criminal economy
Held et al suggest, there has also been a globalisation of crime - an increasing interconnectedness of crime across national borders. This has brought about the spread of transnational organised crime.
Globalisation creates new opportunities for crime, new means of committing crime and new offences, such as various cyber-crimes.
As a result of globalisation, Manuel Castells (1998) argues, there is now a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion per annum.
Forms of the global criminal economy
Arms trafficking to illegal regimes, guerilla groups and
terrorists.
• Trafficking in nuclear materials, especially from the former communist countries.
• Smuggling of illegal immigrants, for example, the Chinese Triads make an estimated $2.5 bilion annualy.
• Trafficking in women and children, often linked to prostitution or slavery. Up to half a million people are trafficked to Western Europe annually.
° Sex tourism, where Westerners travel to poorer countries for sex, sometimes involving minors.
Trafficking in body parts for organ transplants in rich countries. An estimated 2,000 organs annually are taken from condemned or executed criminals in China.
• Cyber-crimes such as identity theft and child pornography.
• Green crimes that damage the environment, such as illegal dumping of toxic waste in poorer countries.
• International terrorism Much terrorism is now based on ideological links made via the Internet and other ICT, rather than on local territorial links as in the past.
• Smuggling of legal goods, such as alcohol and tobacco, to evade taxes, and of stolen goods, such as cars, to sell in foreign markets.
• Trafficking in cultural artefacts and works of art, sometimes having first been stolen to order.
• Trafficking in endangered species or their body parts, for example to produce traditional remedies.
• The drugs trade worth an estimated $300-400 billion annually at street prices.
• Money laundering of the profits from organised crime, estimated at up to $1.5 trillion per year.
Demand and supply of the global criminal economy
The global criminal economy has both a demand side and a supply side. Part of the reason for the scale of transnational organised crime is the demand for its products and services in the rich West. However, the global criminal economy could not function without a supply side that provides the source of the drugs, sex workers and other goods and services demanded in the West.
what is the suplly part of the global crime economy linked to
This supply is linked to the globalisation process. For example, poor, drugs-producing countries such as Colombia, Peru and Afghanistan have large populations of impoverished peasants. For these groups, drug cultivation is an attractive option that requires little investment in technology and commands high prices compared with traditional crops. In Colombia, for instance, an estimated 20% of the population depends on cocaine production for their livelihood, and cocaine outsells all Colombia’s other exports combined. To understand drug crime, we cannot confine our attention merely to the countries where the drugs are consumed.
Why has global crime increased
New Opportunities for Crime
* Improved communication/ better transport has opened up new sources and markets
• Arms trafficking sex tourism, trafficking in body parts, money launderine
* 2 New Means of Committing ‘old’ Crime
* Improved communications/ better transport/ new technology has open up news ways to traffic human beings, smuggle flegal immigrants, smuggling.
drug trafficking
• 3 New Offences
* New technolosy has created new offences such cyber crime and some green crime, trafficking in nuciear weapons
Had globalisation caused crime to increase
New Technology
- Develooments such as the internet/satellites/ mobile phones have facilitated the develooment of new crimes as well as improving the efficiency of ‘old’ crimes
- Better Transport
* Improved interconnectivity has opened up sources of goods/ people and connected them with the markets for the criminal enterprise
- New Interconnectedness
- Enables the more criminal gangs/ organisations to operate more efficientiy. It has also increased tensions between groups which may have increased terrorism
* More Media
* increasing sense of relative deprivation ad marginalisation and thus stimulates the market for goods AND the willingness to turn to crime to achieve them
* Lack of Global Policing
- The global scale of crime is so huge that it is impossible to effectively police
Global risk consciousness
Globalisation creates new insecurities and produces a new mentality of ‘risk consciousness’ in which risk is seen as global rather than tied to particular places. For example, the increased movement of people, as economic migrants seeking work or as asylum seekers fleeing persecution, has given rise to anxieties among populations in Western countries about the risks of crime and disorder and the need to protect their borders
Much of our knowledge about risks comes from the media, which often give an exaggerated view of the dangers we face.
In the case of immigration, the media create moral panics about the supposed ‘threat’, often fuelled by politicians. Negative coverage of immigrants - portrayed as terrorists or as scroungers
‘flooding’ the country - has led to hate crimes against minorities the UK.
One result is the intensification of social control at the national level. The UK has toughened its border control regulations, for example fining airlines if they bring in undocumented passengers.
Marxist interpretations of global crime sociologist
Taylor
Marxism and global crime
Taylor (1997)
• Globalisation has allowed the international free market to create more inequality and rising crime
globalisation, capitalism and crime factors
- globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime. By giving free rein to market forces, globalisation has created greater inequality and rising crime.
- Globalisation has created crime at both ends of the social spectrum.
- All these factors create insecurity and widening inequalities that encourage people, especially the poor, to turn to crime.
- The lack of legitimate job opportunities destroys self-respect and drives the unemployed to look for illegitimate ones
- At the same time, globalisation also creates criminal opportunities on a grand scale for elite groups
- Globalisation has also led to new patterns of employment, which have created new opportunities for crime.
Taylor’s theory is useful in linking global trends in the capitalist economy to changes in the pattern of crime.
However, it does not adequately explain how the changes make people behave in criminal ways. For example, not all poor people turn to crime.
globalisation, capitalism and crime - patterns of crime
Writing from a socialist perspective, lan Taylor (1997) argues that globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime. By giving free rein to market forces, globalisation has created greater inequality and rising crime.
crime at both ends of the spectrum
Globalisation has created crime at both ends of the social spectrum. It has allowed transnational corporations to switch manufacturing to low-wage countries, producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty. Deregulation means that governments have little control over their own economies, for example to create jobs or raise taxes, while state spending on welfare has declined. Marketisation has encouraged people to see themselves as individual consumers, calculating the personal costs and benefits of each action, undermining social cohesion. As left realists note, the increasingly materialistic culture promoted by the global media portrays success in terms of a lifestyle of consumption.
All these factors create insecurity and widening inequalities that encourage people, especially the poor, to turn to crime.
globalisation and jobs
The lack of legitimate job opportunities destroys self-respect and drives the unemployed to look for illegitimate ones, for instance in the lucrative drugs trade. For example, in Los Angeles, de-industrialisation has led to the growth of drugs gangs numbering 10,000 members.
At the same time, globalisation also creates criminal opportunities on a grand scale for elite groups. For example, the deregulation of financial markets has created opportunities for insider trading and the movement of funds around the globe to avoid taxation. Similarly, the creation of transnational bodies such as the European Union has offered opportunities for fraudulent claims for subsidies, estimated at over $7 billion per annum in the EU.
globalisation and patterns of employment
Globalisation has also led to new patterns of employment, which have created new opportunities for crime. It has led to the increased use of subcontracting to recruit ‘flexible’ workers, often working illegally or employed for less than the minimum wage or working in breach of health and safety or other labour laws.
Taylor’s theory is useful in linking global trends in the capitalist economy to changes in the pattern of crime.
However, it does not adequately explain how the changes make people behave in criminal ways. For example, not all poor people turn to crime.
Crime occurs at both ends of the class spectrum
Globalisation and working-class crime
* Exporting manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries
• Produces unemployment, job insecurity, poverty, and poor working conditions
• Marketisation promotys consumer individualism undermining
social cohesion
* This drives working classes to crime
Globalisation and upper-class crime
• Has led to increased opportunities for tax evasion
• EU has offered opportunities for fraudulent subsidies claims (57 billion per annum)
• Led to the demand for flexible work
• Illegal employment and conditions
• EU taking forced workers from North Korea
Why has International Crime
Increased? - marxists
Marxists claim the rise in international criminal networks links to inequalities between countries
• Poorer/developing countries supplying the demands of the rich west
*E.g. Apple
• Capitalism is to blame as incauses this greed - criminogenic
capitalism
* Greed is global, so crime is global
* There is no real desire to really tackle the activities of the global criminal networks since many of them have links to big businesses and are beyond the control of governments
Factors under why has international crime increased
McMafia
Patterns of Global crime
Global Crime and Global insecurity
Global organisations
Global multinationals
McMafia
• Globalisation has increased international crime gangs
• Globalisation has helped to create the conditions in which international crime gangs thrive
• Glenny (2008)
• Globalisation has brought with it the rise of the global organised crime networks - McMafia
* Their criminal activity operates on a global scale and in 2009 earned approx. 15% of the global GDP.
* Activities include: people trafficking, drug trafficking, sales of counterfeit goods including medicines and operating sex tourism
Patterns of global crime
According to Marxists, globalised crime has an economy of supp and demand:
• The rich west are the consumers
• Demanding products such as drugs, sex workers etc.
• The poor developing world countries produce the raw materials.
* E.g. drugs, prostitutes etc.
- Other developing countries act as the processing stage
* E.g. 20% of Columbian population are dependent on the cocaine trade for their livelihood
sociologist for global crime and global insecurity
glenny
Global Crime and Global insecurity
Glenny
• These patterns of global organized crime relate to patterns of inequality
• The rich west provide the demand which ensures the poorer developing countries become the suppliers and processors of the illegal goods
• The global criminal gangs are often too large and sophisticated to be effectively policed.
• No real desire by the ruling elite to limit their activities
sociologist for global organisations
Hobbes and Dunnigham
Global organisations
Hobbes & Dunningham
* Most global crime is locally based in its roots but with global connections.
• Impacts both local and global level
• Example:
* Drug dealers within Russia import cocaine from Columbia to sustain the markets in USA and UK
* The producers, dealers and users operate at the local level buying and selling at local rates and
- This then impacts the local community
Global multinationals
Global Corporations are also criminal
* Marxists claim that globalisation has led to the expansion of
corporate crime
• Tax evasion - Starbucks, anazon etc.
• Green Crime - Union Carbide, Bhopal disaster
• Laundering - FinCEN files
• Overlap between legitimate global companies and illegitimate ones as the latter use the former to launder their illegal profits
- e.g. The McMafia launder their money through legitimate banks
Russian insiders moved at least 520bn of dirty money from Moscow
into the western financial system between 2010 and 2014
• Crime involved Moldovan judges, a Latvian bank and a series of hub-companies, incorporated at Companies House in London
- These were “managed” by firms sitting in remote tax havens
crimes of globalisation sociologist
Rothe and Friedrichs (2015)
Rothe et al (2008)
Maureen Cain (2010)
Crimes of globalisation
Crimes of globalisation
Rothe and Friedrichs (2015) examine the role of international financial organisations such as the (IMF) and the World Bank in what they call ‘crimes of globalisation’
These organisations are dominated by the major capitalist states. For example, the World Bank has 188 member countries, yet just five - the USA, Japan, Germany, Britain and France - hold over a third of the voting rights.
Rothe and Friedrichs argue that these bodies impose pro-capitalist, neoliberal economic ‘structural adjustment programmes’ on poor countries as a condition for the loans they provide. These programmes often require governments to cut spending on health and education, and to privatise publicly-owned services (such as water supply), industries and natural resources.
While this allows Western corporations to expand into thee countries, it creates the conditions for crime. For example, Rothe et al (2008) show how the programme imposed on Rwanda in the 1980s caused mass unemployment and created the economic basis for the 1994 genocide (see below). Maureen Cain (2010) suggests that 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 widespread social harns both directly, through cutting welfare spending, and indirectly, as in the Rwandan case.
patterns of criminal organisation sociologist
Hobbs and Dunningham
patterns of criminal organisation
, globalisation and de-industrialisation have created new criminal opportunities and patterns at a local level. Another local study of a post-industrial town, shows similar results.
Hobbs and Dunningham found that the way crime is organised is linked to the economic changes brought by globalisation. Increasingly, it involves individuals with contacts acting as a ‘hub’ around which a loose-knit criminal network forms. Hobbs and Dunningham arque that this contrasts with the large-scale, hierarchical ‘Mafia’-style criminal organisations of the past, such as that headed by the Kay brothers in the East End of London.
Glocal organisation
These new forms of organisation sometimes have international links, especialy with the drugs trade, but crime sill rooted in its local context. For example, individuat til need local contacts and networks to find opportunttes and to sell their drugs. Hobbs and Dunningham therefore conclude that crime works as a ‘glocal’ system. That is, ris still locally based, but with global connections. This means that the form it takes will vary from place to place, according to local conditions, even if it is influenced by global factors such as the availability of drugs from abroad.
Hobbs and Dunningham argue that changes associated with globalisation have led to changes in patterns of crime
- for example, the shift from the old rigidly hierarchical gang structure to loose networks of flexible, opportunistic, entrepreneurial criminals. However, it is not clear that such patterns are new, nor that the older structures have disappeared. It may be that the two have always co-existed.
Equally, their conclusions may not be generalisable to other criminal activities elsewhere.
sociologist for Mcmafia
glenny
McMafia - textbook
Another example of the relationship between criminal Organisation and globalisation is what Misha Glenny 2008)
Calls “McMafia’. This refers to the organisations that emerged in Russia and Eastern Europe following the fall of communism
- itself a major factor in the process of globalisation.
Glenny traces the origins of transnational organised crime to the break-up of the Soviet Union after 1989, which coincided with the deregulation of global markets.
Under communism, the Soviet state had regulated the prices of everything. However, following the fall of communism, the Russian government deregulated most sectors of the economy except for natural resources such as oil. These commodities remained at their old Soviet prices - often only a fortieth of the world market price. Thus anyone with access to funds - such as former communist officials and KGB (secret service) generals - could buy up oil, gas, diamonds or metals for next to nothing. Selling them abroad at an astronomical profit, these individuals became Russia’s new capitalist class - often popularly referred to as ‘oligarchs’.
Collapse of communism and McMafia
To protect their wealth capitalists therefore turned to the ‘mafias” that had begun to spring up.
These were often alliances between former KGB men and ex-convicts. However, these mafias were unlike the old Italian and American mafias, which were based on ethnic and family ties, with a clear-cut hierarchy. The new Russian mafias were purely economic organisations formed to pursue self-interest. Criminal organisations were vital to the entry of the new Russian capitalist class in the world economy. At the same time, the Russian mafias were able to build links with criminal organisations in other parts of the world.
Green crime meaning
Green or environmental crime can be defined as crime against the environment. Much green crime can be linked to globalisation and the increasing interconnectedness of societies. Regardless of the division of the world into separate nation-states, the planet is a single eco-system, and threats to the eco-system are increasingly global rather than merely local in nature. For example, atmospheric pollution from industry in one country can turn into acid rain that falls in another, poisoning its watercourses and destroying its forests. Similarly, an accident in the nuclear industry - such as the one at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986
- can spread radioactive material over thousands of miles, showing how a problem caused in one locality can have worldwide effects.
Global risk society and the environment
most of the threats to human well being and the eco-system are now human-made rather than natural. Unlike the natural dangers of the past, such as drought and famine, the major risks we face today are of our own making.
Ulrich Beck (1992) argues that in today’s late modern society we can now provide adequate resources for all (at least in the developed countries). However, the massive increase in productivity and the technology that sustains it have created new, ‘manufactured risks” - dangers that we have never faced before. Many of these risks involve harm to the environment and its consequences for humanity, such as global heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions from industry. Like climate change, many of these risks are global rather than local in nature, leading Beck to describe late modern society as ‘global risk society’.
Example of how the global nature of human made risk can produce crime
Mozambique
Mozambique
A striking example of how the global nature of human-made risk can produce crime and disorder comes from Mozambique in 2010. in Rusig where global heating triggered the hottest heatwave in a century, causing wildfires that destroyed parts of the county grain belt. The resulting shortage led Russia to introduce export bans and pushed up the world price of grain.
The knock-on effect in Mozambique, which is heavily dependent on food imports, was a 30% rise in the price of bread. This sparked extensive rioting and looting of food stores that left at least a dozen dead. Mozambique’s own harvest had been hit by drought, possibly also the result of global heating. At the same time, international speculators were engaging in what the World Development Movement called ‘gambling on hunger in financial markets (Patel, 2010).
Bhopal disaster
On the night of 2 December 1984, the US majority-owned pesticide plant at Bhopal, india, started leaking cyanide gas. The plant was no longer in active production and had fallen into disrepair. All six safety-systems failed to operate and 30 tons of gas spread through the city. Half a million people were exposed and some estimate that over 20,000 died.
(Union Carbide acknowledges only 3,800 deaths and claims the explosion was caused by sabotage.) 120,000 continue to suffer effects such as cancers, blindness, breathing difficulties, gynecological disorders and birth defects. As one survivor has said, ‘the lucky ones are the ones who died on that night’.
Heavy metals have been found in the breast milk of women living nearby. Fifteen years after the accident, local groundwater was found to contain up to 6 million times more mercury than normal. Campaigners say the site has never been cleaned up. No one has ever faced a criminal court.
The approach of traditional criminology to Bhopal focuses on the breaches of safety legislation and failure to follow oper maintenance procedures. The approach of green criminology takes a wider view, noting the advantages for the company in locating their plant in a country with weak health and safety and environmental protection legislation.
Perspectives of green come
Traditional Criminology
Green criminology
sciologist for traditional criminology
Situ and Emmons (2000)
Traditional criminology
Traditional criminology is defined by the criminal law. The starting point for this approach is the national and international taxs and regulations concerning the environment. For example, Situ and Emmons (2000) define environmental crime as ‘an unauthorized act or omission that violates the law’. Like other traditional approaches in criminology, it investigates the patterns and causes of lawbreaking.
The advantage of this approach is that it has a clearly defined subject matter.
eval of traditional crim
However, it is criticised for accepting official definitions of environmental problems and crimes, which are often shaped by powerful groups such as big business to serve their own interests.
sociologiist for green criminology
Rob White (2008)
Green criminology
Green criminology takes a more radical approach. It starts from the notion of harm rather than criminal law.
For example, Rob White (2008) argues that the proper subject of criminology is any action that harms the physical environment and/or the human and non-human animals within it, even if no law has been broken.
In fact, many of the worst environmental harms are not illegal, and so the subject matter of green criminology is much wider than that of traditional criminology. FOr this reason, green criminology is a form of transgressive criminology - it oversteps (transgresses) the boundaries of traditional criminology to include new issues. This approach is also known as ‘zemiology’ - literally, the study of harms.
Green criminology and laws
Furthermore, different countries have different laws, so that the same harmful action may be a crime in one country but not in another. Thus, legal definitions cannot provide a consistent standard of harm, since they are the product of individual nation-states and their political processes. By moving away from a legal definition, therefore, green criminology can develop a global perspective on environmental harm.
Green criminology can develop a global perspective on this approach is like the Marxist view of ‘crimes of the powerful. Marxists arque that the capitalist class are able to Shape the law and define crime so that their own explotative scrivities are not criminalised or, where they are, to ensure that enforcement is weak. Similarly, green criminologists argue that powerful interests, especialy nation-states and transnational corporations, are able to define in their own interests what counts as unacceptable environmental harm.
Two views of harm - green criminology
In general, nation-states and transnational corporations adopt what White (2008) calls an anthropocentric or human-centred view of environmental harm. This view assumes that humans have a right to dominate nature for their own ends, and puts economic growth before the environment.
White contrasts this with an eccentric view that sees humans and their environment as interdependent, so that environmental harm hurts humans also. This view sees both humans and the environment as liable to exploitation, particularly by global capitalism. In general, green criminology adopts the eccentric view as the basis for judging environmental harm.
Types of green crime sociologists
Nigel South 2020
Types of green crime
Primary Green Crime
Secondary Green Crime
Primary green crime
Primary green crimes are ‘crimes that result directly from the destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources’. South identifies four main types of primary crime
Types of primary green crime
Crimes of air pollution
Crimes of deforestation
Crimes of specie decline and animal abuse
Crimes of water pollution
Crimes of air pollution
Burning fossil fuels from industry and transport adds 6 billion tons of carbon to the almosphere every year and carbon emissions are growing at around 2% per annum, contributing to global heating.
The potential criminals are governments, business and consumers. According to Walters (2013), twice as many people now die from air pollution-induced breathing problems as 20 years ago.
Crimes of deforestation
Between 1960 and 1990, one-ithofthe words tation Belveen 1 960 destroyed, for example through illegal logging. In the Amazon, forest has been cleared to rear beef cattle for export. In the Andes, the ‘war on drugs’ has led to pesticide spraying to kill coca and marijuana plants, but this has created a new green crime, destroying food crops, contaminating drinking water and causing illness. The criminals include the state and those who profit from forest destruction, such as logging companies and cattle ranchers.
Crimes of species decline and animal abuse
50 species a day are becoming extinct, and 46% of mammal and 11% of bird species are at risk. 70-95% of earth’s species live in the rainforests, which are under severe threat. There is trafficking in animals and animal parts. Meanwhile, old crimes such as dog-fights and badger-baiting are on the increase.
Crime of water pollution
Half a billion people lack access to clean drinking water and 25 million die annually from drinking contaminated water. Marine pollution threatens 58% of the world’s ocean reefs and 34% of its fish. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (see below, page 137) caused massive harm to marine life and coasts. Criminals include businesses that dump toxic waste and governments that discharge untreated sewage into rivers and seas.
sociologist for secondary green crime
south
Secondary green crime
Secondary green crime is crime that grows out of the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters. For example, governments often break their own regulations and cause environmental harms. South suggests two examples of secondary crimes.
Examples of secondary green crime
State violence against oppositional groups
Hazardous waste and organised crime
Environmental discrimination
State violence against oppositional groups
States condemn terrorism, but they have been prepared to resort to similar illegal methods themselves. For example, in 1985 the French secret service blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, killing one crew member. The vessel was there in an attempt to prevent a green crime, namely French nuclear weapons testing in the south Pacific. As Day (1991) says, ‘in every case where a government has committed itself to nuclear weapons or nuclear power, all those who oppose this policy are treated in some degree as enemies of the state’.
sociologist for hazardous waste and organised crime
Reece Walters 2007
Fred Brigland 2006
Hazardous waste and organised crime
Disposal of toxic waste from the chemical, nuclear and other industries is highly profitable. Because of the high costs of safe and legal disposal, businesses may seek to dispose of such waste illegally. For example, in Italy, eco-mafias profit from illegal dumping, much of it at sea. As Reece Walters (2007) notes, ‘the ocean floor has been a radioactive rubbish dump for decades’. For example, 28,500 rusting barrels of radioactive waste lie on the seabed off the Channel Islands, reportedly dumped by UK authorities and corporations in the 1950s.
Illegal dumping often has a globalised character. For example, Fred Bridgland (2006) describes how, after the tsunami of 2004, hundreds of barrels of radioactive waste, illegally dumped by European companies, washed up on the shores of Somalia.
sociologist for ilegal waste disposaln
Rosoff et al (1998)
Illegal waste disposal and secondary green crime
In other cases, Western businesses ship their waste to be processed in poorer countries where costs are lower and safety standards often non-existent. For example, as Rosoff et al (1998) note, the cost of legitimately disposing of toxic waste in the USA is about $2,500 a ton, but some poorer countries will dispose of it for $3 a ton. Similarly, transnational corporations may offload products (such as pharmaceuticals) onto markets in poorer countries after they have been banned on safety grounds in the West.
Illegal waste disposal illustrates the problems of law enforcement in a globalised world. The very existence of laws to regulate waste disposal in developed countries pushes up the costs to business and creates an incentive to dump illegally in poorer countries. In some cases, it is not even illegal, since less developed countries may lack the necessary legislation outlawing it.
Environmental discrimination
Environmental discrimination is how South (2020) describes the fact that poorer groups are worse affected by pollution. For example, Black communities in the USA often find their housing situated next to garbage dumpso polluting industries.
Eval of green criminology
Both the strengths and the weaknesses of green crimind. arise from its focus on global environmental concerns. It recognises the growing importance of environmental issus and the need to address the harms and risks of environments damage, both to humans and non-human animals.
However, by focusing on the much broader concept of harms rather than simply on legally defined crimes, it is hard to define the boundaries of its field of study clearly.
Defining these boundaries involves making moral or polite statements about which actions ought to be regarded as wrong. Critics argue that this is a matter of values and cannot be established objectively.
Marxists and traditional sociologists Eval of green crime
Marxists
• Taylor - capitalism is criminogenic
• Globalisation has allowed capitalism to expand its scale of crimes into the environment
• Companies will destroy the planet in pursuit of profit
*The need of o constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.” (Marx & Engles, 1848]
• Traditional Sociology
* Hard to define boundaries of green crime without set legal definition
• Reflective of personal values than objectivity
sociologist for meaning of state crime
Penny Green and Tony Ward (2012)
Meaning of state crime
Penny Green and Tony Ward (2012) define state crime as illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies.’ It includes all forms of crime committed by or on behalf of states and governments in order to further their policies. State crimes do not include acts that merely benefit individuals who work for the state, such as a police officer who accepts a bribe.
State crime is perhaps the most serious form of crime for two reasons.
The scale of state crime
The state is the source of law
sociologist for scale of state crime
Michalowski and Kramer
The scale of state crime
The state’s enormous power gives it the potential to inflict harm on a huge scale. For example, Green and Ward
(2012) cite a figure of 262 million people murdered by governments during the 20th century. As Michalowski and Kramer (2006) note:
‘Great power and great crimes are inseparable. Economic and political elites can bring death, disease, and loss to tens of thousands with a single decision.’
The state is a source of law
It is the state’s role to define what is criminal, uphold the law and prosecute offenders. However, its power means that it can conceal its crimes, evade punishment for them, and even avoid defining its own actions as criminal in the first place. State crime undermines the system of justice and public faith in it.
States of all kinds, including democracies such as Britain and the USA, have been guilty of crimes, but the principle of national sovereignty - that states are the supreme authority within their own borders - makes it difficult for external authorities such as the United Nations to intervene.
Case studies of state crime
Eugene McLaughlin (2012) identifies four categories of state crime:
1 Political crimes, for example corruption and censorship
2 Crimes by security and police forces, such as genocide, torture and disappearances of dissidents.
3 Economic crimes, for example official violations of health and safety laws.
4 Social and cultural crimes, such as institutional racism.
Categories of state crime
Political crime
Crimes by security and police forces
Economic crimes
Social and cultural crimes
Political crime
When government/government agencies break the law/cause harm in the interest of government of political system
• Bribery/treason/theft/espionage etc.
Crimes by security and police forces
When security agencies break the law/cause harm on behalf of the government
• Genocide/torture/disappearance of dissidents
• Under dictatorship - Pol Pot - Cambodia’s killing fields
• Under a democracy - Guantanamo Bay
Economic crimes
Where government or agencies act against the economic interests of the people
Kleptocracy - government seeking to exploit the people for personal
wealth and power
•Nigeria - more than $400 billion was stolen from the treasury by
Nigeria’s leaders between 1960 and 1999
Social and cultural crimes
Government targets sections of the population due to customs and practices
• Holocaust
case studies of state crime
Genocide in Rwanda
State corporate crime
War crimes
Genocide in Rwanda
The UN defines genocide as ‘acts committed with intent o destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial.. talgious group’. In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the 20th century’s fastest genocide” (Straus 2015, 2016).
Rwanda became a Belgian colony in 1922 and the Belgians ised the minority Tutsi to mediate their rule over the Hutu majority. But Hutus and Tutsis were not separate ethnic groups - they spoke the same language and often intermarried. Rather, they were more like social classes: Tutsis owned livestock and Hutus did not; Hutus could become Tutsis if they could afford to buy cattle. However, the Beloians ethnicised’ the two groups, issuing them with racial identity cards, and educated the two groups separately.
Rwanda gained independence in 1962 and elections brought the majority Hutus to power. By the 1990s, an escalating economic and political crisis led to civil war, with Hutu hardliners in the government attempting to cling on to power by fuelling race hate propaganda against the Tutsis.
The shooting down of the Hutu president’s plane in 1994 triggered the genocide. In a hundred days, 800,000 Tutsis (along with moderate Hutus) were slaughtered, legitimated with dehumanising labels describing Tutsis as ‘cockroaches” and ‘rats’. Initially, the killing was done by marauding groups of Hutu militia. Later, many Hutu civilians were forced to either join in the killing or be killed themselves, and a third of the Hutu population are estimated to have actively participated in the genocide.
sociologist for state corporate crime
Kramer and Michalowski
State corporate crime
State crimes are often committed in conjunction with corporate crimes. Kramer and Michalowski (1993) distinquish between ‘state-initiated’ and ‘state-facilitated’ corporate crime.
Types of state corporate crime
The challenger space shuttle disaster
The deep water horizon oil rig disaster
The challenger space shuttle disaster
disaster in 1986 is an example of state-initiated corporate crime. This occurs when states initiate, direct or approve corporate crimes.
In the case of Challenger, risky, negligent and cost-cutting decisions by the state agency NASA and the corporation Morton Thiokol led to the explosion that killed seven astronauts 73 seconds after blast-off (Kramer 1992).
The deep water horizon oil rig disaster
in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is an example of state-facilitated corporate crime. This occurs when states fail to regulate and control corporate behaviour, making crime easier. The rig, leased by of, exploded and sank, killing eleven workers and causing the largest accidental oil spil in history, with major health, environmental and economic impacts. The official enquiry found that while the disaster resulted from decisions by the companies involved (BP, Hailburton and Transocean, government regulators had failed to oversee the industro adequately or to notice the companies’ cost- cutting decisions.
War crimes types
Illegal wars
Crimes committed during war or it’s aftermath
sociologist for types of war crimes
whyte
Illegal wars
Under international law, in all cases other than self-defence, war can only be declared by the UN Security Council. On this basis, many see the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of the ‘war on terror’ as illegal. For example, Kramer and Michalowksi (2005) argue that to justify their invasion of Iraq in 2003 as self-defence, the USA and UK knowingly made the false claim that the Iragis possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Crimes committed during wars or it’s aftermath
For example, Whyte (2014) describes the USA’s ‘neo-liberal colonisation’ of Iraq, in which the constitution was illegally changed so that the economy could be privatised. Iraqi oil revenues were seized to pay for ‘reconstruction’. In 2004 alone, over $48 billion went to US firms. But poor oversight by the occupying powers meant it is unclear where much of this went, and ‘cost-plus’ contracts (where all the contractor’s costs are met automatically by the government, regardless of what they are for) led to enormous waste. This case is also an example of state-corporate crime.
Kramer and war crimes
Kramer and Michalowski identify other crimes committed during the Iraq War, including torture of prisoners. A US military inquiry into Abu Ghraib prison found numerous instances of ‘sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses* of prisoners. Nine soldiers were convicted, the highest-ranking being a staff sergeant. No commanding officers were prosecuted. Personnel from private companies were also implicated but none were prosecuted.
Kramer (2014) also notes how the terror bombing of civilians has become ‘normalised’. This began in the 1930s and continued through the Second World War with the American fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities and atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No trials for war crimes took place Indiscriminate and often deliberate
done had continuod in 31et contury conflicte
Defining state crime - factors
Domestic laws
Social harms and zemiology
Labelling and societal reaction
International law
Human rights
sociologist for domestic laws
Chambliss (1989)
Domestic laws
Chambliss (1989) defines state crime as ‘acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representatives of the state’
However, using a state’s own domestic law to define state crime is inadequate. It ignores the fact that states have the power to make laws and so they can avoid criminalising their own actions. Furthermore, they can make laws allowing them to carry out harmful acts. For example, the German Nazi state passed a law permitting it to compulsorily sterilise the disabled. This definition also leads to inconsistencies. For example, the same act may be illegal on one side of a border but legal on the other.
Social harms and zemiology sociologist
Michalowski
Hillyard et al
Social harms and zemiology
This recognises that much of the harm done by states is not against the law. Michalowski (1985) therefore defines state crime as including not just illegal acts, but also ‘legally permissible acts whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts’ in the harm they cause.
Similarly, Hillyard et al (2004) argue that we should take a much wider view of state wrongdoing. We should replace the study of crimes with ‘zemiology’ - the study of harms, whether or not they are against the law. For example, these harms would include state-facilitated poverty.
This definition prevents states from ruling themselves out of court by making laws that allow them to misbehave. It also creates a single standard that can be applied to different states to identify which ones are most harmful to human or environmental wellbeing.
Criticism of social harms and zemiology
However, critics argue that a ‘harms’ definition is potentially very vague:
• What level of harm must occur before an act is defined as a crime? There is a danger that it makes the field of study too wide.
• Who decides what counts as a harm? This just replaces the state’s arbitrary definition of crime with the sociologist’s equally arbitrary definition of harm.
Labelling and societal reaction
Labelling theory argues that whether an act constitutes a crime depends on whether the social audience for that act defines it as a crime. The audience may witness the act either directly or indirectly, for example through media reports.
This definition recognises that state crime is socially constructed, and so what people regard as a state crime can vary over time and between cultures or groups. This prevents the sociologist imposing their own definition of state crime when this may not be how the participants (perpetrators, victims and audiences) define the situation.
sociologist for criticisms of labelling and societal reaction
Kauzlarich
Criticisms of labelling and societal reaction
However, this definition is even vaguer than ‘social harms.
For example, Kauzlarich’s (2007) study of anti-Irag War protestors found that while they saw the war as harmful and illegitimate, they were unwilling to label it criminal. By contrast, from a ‘harms’ or an international law perspective, the war can be seen as illegal.
It is also unclear who is supposed to be the relevant audience that decides whether a state crime has been committed, or what to do if different audiences reach different verdicts about an act.
It also ignores the fact that audiences’ definitions may be manipulated by ruling-class ideology. For example, the media may persuade the public to see a war as legitimate rather than criminal.
sociologist for international law
Rothe and Mullins
Interval law
Some sociologists base their definition of state crime on international law - that is, law created through treaties and agreements between states, such as the Geneva and Hague Conventions on war crimes. For example, Rothe and Mullins
(2008) define a state crime as any action by or on behalf of a state that violates international law and/or a state’s own domestic law.
The advantage of this is that it does not depend on the sociologist’s own personal definitions of harm or who the relevant social audience is. Instead it uses globally agreed definitions of state crime. International law also has the advantage of being intentionally designed to deal with state crime, unlike most domestic law.
sociologist for critic of international law
strand and truman
Critic of international law
However, like the laws made by individual states, international law is a social construction involving the use of power. For example, Strand and Tuman (2012) found that Japan has sought to overturn the international ban on whaling by concentrating its foreign aid on impoverished
‘microstates’, including six small Caribbean island nations, to bribe them to vote against the ban.
Another limitation is that international law focuses largely on war crimes and crimes against humanity, rather than other state crimes such as corruption.
Human rights
Some sociologists use human rights as a way of defining state crime. Human rights include:
• Natural rights that people have simply by virtue of existing, such as the right to life, liberty and free speech.
• Civil rights, such as the right to vote, to privacy, to a fair trial, or to education.
human rights sociologists
Herman and Julia Schwendinger
Human rights - sociologists explanation
Herman and Julia Schwendinger (1975) argue that we should define state crime as the violation of people’s basic human rights by the state or its agents. States that practise imperialism, racism, sexism or economic exploitation are commiting crimes because they are denying people their basic rights
Risse et al (1999) argue that one advantage of this definition that virtually all states care about their human rights image, because these rights are now global social norms.
This makes them susceptible to ‘shaming’ and this can provide leverage to make them respect their citizens’ rights.
For the Schwendingers, the definition of crime is inevitably political. If we accept a legal definition (that crimes are simply whatever the state says they are), we become subservient to the state’s interests. The Schwendingers argue that the sociologist’s role should be to defend human rights, if necessary against the state’s laws. Like the
‘harms’ approach, their view is an example of transgressive criminology, since it goes beyond the traditional boundaries of criminology, which are defined by the criminal law.
sociologist for eval of human rights
cohen
green and ward
Eval of human rights
However, Stanley Cohen (1996; 2001) criticises the Schwendingers’ view. While gross violations of human rights, such as torture, are clearly crimes, other acts, such as economic exploitation, are not self-evidently criminal, even if we find them morally unacceptable.
There are also disagreements about what counts as a human right. While most would include life and liberty, some would not include freedom from hunger. However, Green and Ward (2012) counter this with the view that liberty is not much use if people are too malnourished to exercise it. Therefore if the state knowingly permits the export of food from a famine area, for example - like the British government did during the Irish famine of 1845 then this is a denial of human rights and a state crime.
Explaining state crime
While genocides may be ordered and organised by leaders of states, they cannot happen without the cooperation of ordinary soldiers, police and civilians. For example, in both Rwanda and Nazi Germany, genocide needed the involvement of a large proportion of the population.
Why and how do large numbers of normally law-abiding citizens become involved in atrocities? We now examine some possible explanations.
Explaining state crime factors
The authoritarian personality
Crimes of obedience
Modernity
the culture of denial
sociologist for authoritarian personality
adorno et al
The authoritarian personality
Adorno et al (1950) identify an ‘authoritarian personality” that includes a willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question. They argue that at the time of the Second World War, many Germans had authoritarian personality Types due to the punitive, disciplinarian socialisation patterns that were common at the time.
Similarly, it is often thought that people who carry Out torture and genocide must be psychopaths.
Eval of authoritarian personality
However, research. suggests that there is little psychological difference between them and ‘normal’ people. For example, Arendt’s (2006) study of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann showed him to be relatively normal and not even particularly anti-Semitic.
sociologist for crimes of obedience
Green and Ward
Crimes of obedience
state crimes are crimes of conformity, since they require obedience to a higher authority - the state or its representative. For example, in a corrupt police unit, the officer who accepts bribes is conforming to the unit’s norms, while at the same time breaking the law. Conforming to one norm means deviating from the other.
Research suggests that many people are willing to obey authority even when this involves harming others. Sociologists argue that such actions are part of a role into which individuals are socialised. They focus on the social conditions in which atrocities become acceptable or even required.
For example, according to Green and Ward in order to overcome norms against the use of cruelty, individuals who become torturers often need to be re-socialised, trained and exposed to propaganda about ‘the enemy’.
States also frequently create ‘enclaves of barbarism’ where torture is practised, such as military bases, segregated from outside society. This allows the torturer to regard it as a ‘9 to 5’ job from which they can return to normal everyday life.
sociologist for my lai massacre
Kelman and Hamilton
My lai massacre and crimes of obedience
From a study of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, where a platoon of American soldiers killed 400 civilians, Kelman and Hamilton (1989) identify three general features that produce crimes of obedience:
• Authorisation When acts are ordered or approved by those in authority, normal moral principles are replaced by the duty to obey.
• Routinisation Once the crime has been committed, there is strong pressure to turn the act into a routine that individuals can perform in a detached manner.
• Dehumanisation When the enemy is portrayed as sub-human, normal principles of morality do not apply.
sociologist for modernity
Zygmunt Bauman (1989)
Modernity
Some argue that the Nazi Holocaust represented a breakdown of modern civilisation and a reversion to pre-modern barbarism. However, Zygmunt Bauman (1989) takes the opposite view: it was certain key features of modern society that made the Holocaust possible:
Modern reasons for the holocaust
- A division of labour - Each person was responsible for just one small task, so no-one felt personally responsible for the atrocity.
Bureaucratisation normalised the killing by making it a repetitive, rule-governed and routine ‘job’. It also meant that the victims could be dehumanised as mere units’. - Instrumental rationality - where rational, efficient methods are used to achieve a goal, regardless of what the goal is. In modern business, the goal is profit; in the Holocaust, it was murder.
- Science and technology - from the railways transporting victims to the death camps, to the industrially produced gas used to kill them.
The Holocaust was a modern, industrialised mass production
‘factory’ system, where the product was mass murder. For Bauman, the Holocaust was the result not of a breakdown of civilisation, but of the very existence of modern rational-bureaucratic civilisation.
Eval of modernity
Not all genocides occur through a highly organised division of labour that allows participants to distance themselves from the killing. For example, the Rwandan genocide was carried out directly by large marauding groups.
2. Ideological factors are also important. Nazi ideology stressed a single, monolithic German racial identity that excluded minorities such as Jews, Roma and Slavs, who were defined as inferior or even sub-human. This meant they did not need to be treated according to normal standards of morality.
3. Thus, while the modern, rational division of labour may have supplied the means for the Holocaust, it was racist ideology that supplied the motivation to carry it out. A decade of anti-Semitic propaganda preceded the mass murder of the Jews and helped to create many willing participants and many more sympathetic bystanders.
sociologist for culture of denial
alvarez
cohen
The culture of denial -
According to Alvarez (2010), recent years have seen the growing impact of the international human rights movement, for example through the work of organisations such as Amnesty International, and this is bringing pressure to bear on states.
As a result, Cohen (2006) argues, states now have to make a greater effort to conceal or justify their human rights crimes, or to re-label them as not crimes. Cohen is interested in the ways states do this. While dictatorships generally just flatly deny any human rights abuses, democratic states have to legitimate their actions in more complex ways. In doing so, their justifications follow a three-stage ‘spiral of state denial’:
Spiral of state denial stages
Stage 1 ‘It didn’t happen’; e.g. the state claims there was no massacre. But then human rights organisations, victims and the media show it did happen: ‘here are the graves; we have the photos’
Stage 2 ‘If it did happen, “it” is something else’; e.g. the state says it was self-defence, not murder.
Stage 3 ‘Even if it is what you say it is, it’s justified’, e.g. to fight the ‘war on terror’
Techniques of neutralisation Cohen examines the ways in which states deny or justify their crimes. He draws on the work of Sykes and Matza (1957), who identify five neutralisation techniques that de inquents use to justify their deviant behaviour. Cohen shows how states use the same techniques to justify human rights violations:
Denial of victim ‘They exaggerate; they are terrorists; they are used to violence; look what they do to each other:
Denial of injury ‘We are the real victims, not them.’ Denial of responsibility ‘ was only obeying orders, doing my duty.’ This justification is often used by individual policemen, death camp guards etc.
Condemning the condemners ‘They are condemning us only because of their anti-Semitism (Israeli version), their hostility to Islam (Arab version), their racism.
Appeal to higher loyalty Self-righteous justifications that claim to be serving a higher cause, whether the nation, Zionism, Islam, the defence of the ‘free world’, national security etc.
Spiral of state denial techniques
These techniques do not deny that the event has occurred.
Rather, ‘they seek to impose a different construction of the event from what might appear to be the case’. For example, Cohen (2006) argues that in its ‘war on terror’, the USA had to publicly justify its coercive interrogation practices, which
Cohen describes as ‘torture lite’.
These included hooding, shaking, sleep deprivation, the use of stress positions and ‘water boarding’ (simulated drowning). The US claimed that these techniques were not torture because they merely induced stress and were not physically or psychologically damaging. Cohen sees this as neutralisation technique aimed at normalising torture.
sociologist for hazardous waste and organised crime
Reece Walters 2007
Fred Brigland 2006
