globalisation and crime

Question 1

what is globalisation

Answer 1

The increasing interconnectedness of societies, so that what happens in one locality is shaped by distant events and vice versa across national borders

Question 2

Held

Answer 2

this has also led to a ‘globalisation of crime’- an increasing interconnectedness of crime across national borders
-globalisation creates new opportunities for crime,

Question 3

Castells: the global criminal economy
What types of crime are of concern?

Answer 3

there is now a global criminal economy with over £1 trillion per annum, and it takes a number of forms:
-Arms trafficking
-Trafficking in nuclear materials
-Smuggling of illegal immigrants
-Trafficking in women and children
-sex tourism
-Trafficking in body parts
-Cyber crimes
-Green crimes
-International terrorism
-Smuggling of legal goods
-Trafficking in cultural artefacts
-Trafficking in endangered species
-The drugs trade
-Money laundering

-the global criminal economy has both a demand and supply end (usually Third World countries e.g. Colombia: 20% of the population depends on cocaine production for their livelihood- command higher prices compared to traditional crops)

Question 4

global risk consciousness

Answer 4

-globalisation creates new insecurities, and produces a new mentality of ‘risk consciousness’
-Risk is seen as global, rather than tied to particular places
-e.g. Risks about crime and disorder due to asylum seekers and economic migrants seeking work
-potential knowledge comes from the media, who often give an exaggerated view and create moral panics
-However, it does lead to an intensification of social control e.g. The UK has tougher border control regulations like fences CCTV and thermal imaging devices in some countries.

Question 5

Taylor: globalisation capitalism and crime

Answer 5

-changes in patterns and extent of crime
-Globalisation has led to greater inequality and rising crime:
-deregulation: governments have little control over their own economies e.g. 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
-materialistic culture= (left realists) the increasing materialistic culture, promoted by the global media portrays success in terms of a lifestyle of consumption
HOWEVER
Not all poor people turn to crime

Question 6

Rothe and Friedrichs
Cain
How does the IMF (International Financial Organisations) and the World Bank act as a ‘global state and cause widespread harm?

Answer 6

-these bodies, impose pro-capitalist, neoliberal economic ‘structural, adjustment programmes’ on poor countries as a condition for the loans they provide
-They often require the government to cut spending on health and education, and to privatise publicly owned services e.g. Water supply, industries and natural resources
-While it all allows western corporations to expand into these countries, it creates the conditions for crime e.g. (ROTHE ET AL): programme imposed in Rwanda in the 1980s caused mass unemployment

Question 7

Cain

Answer 7

-The IMF and World Bank act as a global state and can cause social harm directly through cutting welfare spending and indirectly, such as in Rwanda

Question 8

Hobbs and Dunningham: ‘Glocal’ organisation

Answer 8

-crime is still locally based, but with the global connections, so the form it takes will vary from place to place according to local conditions, even if it is influenced by global factors
e.g. Availability of drugs from abroad.
-Criminals need local contacts to find opportunities and sell their drugs
-changes associated with globalisation have led to changes in patterns of crime: e.g. old rigid hierarchal gangs to loose networks of flexible, opportunistic, entrepreneurial criminals
but ): not clear such patterns are new, could have co-existed, may be different in other areas

Question 9

Misha Glenny: ‘McMafia’

Answer 9

-organisations that emerged in Russia, after the fall of communism
-Criminals took advantage of the new global trading opportunities
-New Russian mafia emerged that were purely economic organisations, unlike the old style, Italian American mafia, which is formed from family and ethnic ties

Question 10

What is green crime?

Answer 10

crime against the environment

Question 11

Ultrich Beck: ‘Global risk society’ and the environment

Answer 11

-The massive increase in productivity and technology have created new manufactured risks
-Many of these risks involve harm to the environment and its consequences for humanity
-Many of these risks are global e.g. Climate change leading Beck to describe late modern society as ‘global risk society’
-examples of manufactured risks: global warming, nuclear wars etc.

Question 12

Bhopal disaster- case study

Answer 12

-2.12.1984
-US majority owned union Carbide pesticide plants at Bhopal, India, started leaking cyanide gas
-all 6 safety systems failed to operate and 30 tons of gas spread through the city
-Half a million were exposed to the gas, and estimated 20,000 died, 120,000 continue to suffer effect like cancer, blindness, breathing difficulties, birth defects etc.
-Heavy metals have been found in the breast milk of women living nearby
-15 years later, local groundwater was founded contain 6 million times more mercury than normal

Question 13

traditional criminologists: Situ and Emmons

Answer 13

-they define environmental crime as ‘an unauthorised act or omission that violates the law’
-If no law has been broken, they are not concerned

Question 14

green criminologists

Answer 14

-start from the notion of harm rather than criminal law
-It is a form of transgressive criminology as it overstep the boundaries of traditional criminology to include new areas
-Also different countries have different different laws so some harmful action may be a crime in one country but not another so moving away from a legal definition, therefore allows green criminology to develop a global perspective on environmental harm

Question 15

how is the green criminology view similar to the Marxist view?

Answer 15

-powerful interests are able to define in their own interest what counts as unacceptable, environmental harm
-capitalist class = like the powerful interests e.g. Nation states, and TNCs, who define what is unacceptable, environmental harm in their own interests.

Question 16

anthropocentric view of harm

Answer 16

Assumes that humans have the right to dominate nature to their own needs and put economic growth before the environment

Question 17

ecocentric view of harm

Answer 17

-humans and the environment are interdependence, so environmental harm, hurts humans too

Question 18

Nigel South: types of green crime

Answer 18

classifies green crimes into two types:
-Primary crime
-Secondary crime

Question 19

primary crime (with examples)

Answer 19

Crimes that result directly from the destruction and degradation of the earths resources
-e.g. crimes of air pollution, crimes of deforestation, crimes of species decline and animal abuse, crimes of water pollution

Question 20

secondary crime (with examples)

Answer 20

crime that grows out of the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters
-e.g. State violence against oppositional groups, hazardous waste and organised crime

Question 21

primary: crimes of air pollution
Walters

Answer 21

-2x as many people die from air pollution-induced breathing problems compared to 20 years ago
-Burning fossil fuels add 6 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere every year
-The potential criminals are governments, businesses and consumers

Question 22

primary: crimes of deforestation

Answer 22

-1960-1990: 1/5 of the worlds, tropical rainforest was destroyed e.g. Through illegal, logging
-in Andes, ‘ war on drugs’ -> pesticide spraying to kill coca and marijuana plants but this has destroyed food, crops, contaminated drinking water causing illness
-Criminals are governments and those who profit from forest destruction e.g. Logging companies, cattle ranchers

Question 23

primary: crimes of species, decline and animal abuse

Answer 23

-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

Question 24

primary: crimes of water pollution

Answer 24

-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 worlds ocean reefs and 34% of its fish
-The Deepwater Horizon oil spill massive harm to marine life and coasts
-Criminals include businesses, that dump, toxic waste and governments, that discharge and treated sewage into rivers and seas

Question 25

secondary: state, violence against oppositional groups

Answer 25

-In 1985, French Secret Service blew up the Greenpeace ship ‘Rainbow warrior’ in New Zealand killing a crewmember
-The vessel was there to prevent a green crime (French nuclear weapon testing in the south Pacific)
-States condemn terrorism, but resort to similar illegal methods themselves

Question 26

secondary: hazardous waste and organised crime

Answer 26

-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 a waste illegally
-Western businesses ship their waste to be processed in Third World countries where costs are lower and safety standards are often non-existent
-ROSOFF ET AL: cost of legitimately disposing of toxic quest in the USA is $2500 per ton but $3 per ton in Third World countries

Question 27

Wolf: who commits green crimes?

Answer 27

(1) individuals: e.g. Littering, fly tipping
-Can have a powerful cumulative impact
(2) private business organisations- environmental crime is typical of corporate crime e.g. Dumping of waste, breaches of health and safety, emissions of toxic materials.
(3) state and governments: often in collision with private businesses. Santana points out that the military is the largest institutional polluter
(4) organised crime: e.g. Through global criminal networks.

Question 28

Wolf: the victims of crime

Answer 28

Points out that there are wide inequalities in the distribution of harm and risks to victims and how laws are made, applied and enforced

Question 29

Potter: the victims of crime

Answer 29

-suggests the current social divisions are reinforced by environmental harm with the least powerful being the most likely victims of green crimes
-also suggests that there is ‘environmental racism’

Question 30

South: the victims of crime

Answer 30

-e.g. Black communities in the USA often find their housing situated next to garbage, dumps or polluting industries.
‘environmental discrimination’

Question 31

White: the victims of crime

Answer 31

Developing countries face far greater exposure to environment pollution

Question 32

evaluation of green criminology

Answer 32

(: recognises the growing importance of environmental issues and the need to address the homes and risks of environmental damage both to humans and animals
): but by focusing on the broader concept of harms, rather than legally defined crimes, it is hard to define the boundaries of its field of study clearly
-Defining these boundaries involves making moral or political statements about which actions ought to be regarded as wrong- this is a matter of values and can’t be established objectively

Question 33

problems of researching green crime

Answer 33

-different laws
-Different definitions
-Difficulties in measurement
-The use of case studies

Question 34

Green and Ward: what is a state crime?

Answer 34

-illegal or deviant activities perpetuated by or with the complicity of state agencies

Question 35

Why are state crimes seen as the most serious form of crime?

Answer 35

(1) the scale of state crime: Great power of the state allows them to inflict harm on a huge scale e.g. Green and Ward: 262 million people murdered by governments during the 20th century
(2) the state is the source of law: can conceal their crimes, evade punishment and even avoid, defining its own actions as criminal

Question 36

Mclaughlin: 4 examples of state crime

Answer 36

(1) political: e.g. Corruption, censorship
(2) crimes by security and police forces: e.g. Genocide, torture
(3) economic crimes: e.g. Violation of health and safety laws.
(4) social and cultural crimes: e.g. Institutional racism

Question 37

examples of war crimes

Answer 37

-attacks on non-civilians
-Taking hostages
-Using civilians as shields
-Using child soldiers

Question 38

case study: genocide in Rwanda

Answer 38

-Rwanda became a Belgian colony in 1922, and they used the minority (Tutsi) to mediate their rule over the Hutu majority
-They weren’t separate ethnic groups (spoke the same language and often intermarried), but more like social classes (Tutsis owned livestock but the Hutu didn’t and Hutus could become Tutsis if they could afford to buy a cattle)
-BUT the Belgians ‘ethnicised’ the two groups, issuing them with racial identity cards and educated, the two group separately
-1962: Hutus brought to power
-1990s: escalating, economic and political crisis led to a civil War, where the Hutu hardliners cling onto power using race hate propaganda against the Tutsis
-The shooting down of the Hutu president’s plane trigger the genocide
-In 100 days 800,000 Tutsis was slaughtered, legitimated with dehumanising labels describing Tutsis as ‘cockroaches’ and ‘rats’
-1/3 of the Hutu population are estimated to have actively participated in the genocide

Question 39

What are some examples of state corporate crimes?

Answer 39

-The Challenger space shuttle disaster
-The Deepwater Horizon oil rig

Question 40

the challenger space shuttle disaster

Answer 40

-1986
-A state-initiated corporate crime (when states initiate direct or approve corporate crimes)
-For the challenger; risky, negligent and cost-cutting decisions, by the state agency, NASA, and the corporation, Morton Thiokol lead the explosion that killed seven, astronauts, 73 seconds after blast-off

Question 41

The deep water horizon oil rig

Answer 41

-in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010
-An example of state-facilitated corporate crime (when states fail to regulate and control corporate behaviour making crime easier)
-The rig leased by BP exploded and sank killing 11 workers and causing the largest accidental oil, spill in history with major health and environmental impacts
-the official enquiry found that while the disaster resulted from decisions by the companies involved (BP, Halliburton, Transocean), government regulators, had failed to oversee the industry adequately, or notice the companies cost-cutting decisions.

Question 42

War crimes: illegal wars
(Kramer and Michalowski)

Answer 42

-under international law: in , so many see US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the name of ‘war on terror’ as illegal
-Kramer and Michalowski argue that to justify the invasion on Iraq as self-defence the UK, and USA knowingly made the false claim that the Iraqis possessed weapons of mass destruction

Question 43

Whyte: war crimes- crimes committed during war or its aftermath

Answer 43

-USA’s ‘neo-liberal colonisation of Iraq’
-Constitution was illegally changed to economy was privatised
-Iraqi oil revenue seized to pay for ‘reconstruction’
-In 2004 alone, $48 billion, went to the US firms
-it is unclear where most of the money went

Question 44

Kramer and Michalowski: war crimes- crimes committed during war or its aftermath

Answer 44

-all the crimes committed during the Iraq war included torture of prisoners- US military enquiry into Abu Ghraib prison, found numerous instances of ‘sadistic, blatant wanton criminal abuses’
-Nine soldiers convicted (including staff sergeant)
-No commending, officers, prosecuted or personnel from private companies

Question 45

Kramer: war crimes- crimes committed during war or its aftermath

Answer 45

-terror bombing of civilians became ‘normalised’
-Indiscriminate and often deliberate bombing of civilians has continued in recent conflicts in Iraq and Syria

Question 46

Ways of defining state crime

Answer 46

-domestic law
-Social harms and zemiology
-Labelling and societal reaction
-International law
-Human rights

Question 47

Chambliss: domestic law

Answer 47

-define state crime as ‘acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representative of the state’
): using a states own domestic law to define state crime is inadequate as it ignores their own actions-they can make laws, allowing them to carry out harmful acts
e.g. The German Nazi state passed a law, permitting it to compulsory sterilised the disabled.
): also leads to inconsistencies: the same act may be illegal on one side of the border, but not the other

Question 48

social harms and zemiology:
Michalowski
Hillyard et al

Answer 48

-Michalowski: state crimes, do not just include illegal acts, but also ‘legally permissible acts, whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts’ in the harm that they cause
-Hillyard et al: we should take a wide view of state, wrongdoing, and replace study of crimes with ‘zemiology’- the study of harms, whether or not they are against the law e.g. state-facilitated poverty
(: prevent states from ruling themselves ‘out of court’ by making laws that allow them to misbehave
(: create a single standard that can be applied to different states to identify which ones are most harmful to human or environment well-being
): what level of must occur before an actors 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 states, arbitrary definition of crime with the sociologists, equally arbitrary definition of harm

Question 49

labelling and societal reaction

Answer 49

-whether an act constitutes as a crime is up to if the social audience defines it as a crime
-State crimes, definition is socially constructed and can change overtime between cultures and groups
(: prevent as sociologist, imposing their own definitions of state crime
): vague definition: Even vaguer than ‘social harms’: Kauzlarich’s study of anti-Iraq, war protesters found that while they saw the war, as harmful and illegitimate, they were unwilling to label it as ‘criminal’ by contrast, from a ‘harms’, or an international perspective, the world can be seen as illegal
): who is supposed to be the relevant audience that decides whether a state crime has been committed or what to do if different audiences reached different verdict about an act
): also ignore the fact that audience has definitions may be manipulated by ruling class ideology e.g. The media may persuade the public to see a war as legitimate rather than criminal.

Question 50

international law

Answer 50

-law created through treaties and agreements between states
-Rothe and Mullins: define a state frame as any action by or on behalf of, a state that violates international law, and/or state’s own domestic law
(: does not depend on the sociologists own personal definitions of harm, or who the relevant social audience is, and instead uses globally, agreed definitions of state crime
(: intentionally designed to deal with crime, unlike most domestic law
): international law is a social construction involving the use of power e.g. Japan overturning international ban on whaling
): international law focuses largely on war crimes and crimes against humanity, rather than other state crimes, such as corruption

Question 51

human rights

Answer 51

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 fair trial or education
-Schwendinger and Schwendinger argue that we should define state crime as the violation of peoples basic human rights by the state agents- states at practice, imperialism, racism, sexism, or economic, exploitation, or committing crimes, because they are denying people their basic rights
-Believe that the sociologist role should be to defend human rights if necessary against the states law (transgressive criminology)
(: Risse et al: virtually all states care about the human rights image, because these rights are now global social norms, which makes them susceptible to shaming, and this can provide leverage to make them respect their citizens rights
): Cohen: while gross violations of human rights, such as torture are clearly crimes, are acts such as economic exploitation are not self-evidently criminal, even if we find them morally unacceptable
): disagreements about what count as a human right- while most would include life, and liberty would not include freedom from hunger BUT GREEN AND WARD: count this with the view, that liberty is not much use if people are too malnourished to exercise it, therefore, if the state knowingly permits to export or food from a famine area, for example (like the British government did during the Irish famine of the 1840s) then this is a denial of human rights and a state crime

Question 52

3 ways to explain state crime

Answer 52

-The authoritarian personality
-Crimes of obedience
-Modernity

Question 53

Adorno: the authoritarian personality

Answer 53

-identify an authoritarian personality that includes a willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question
-Argue that at the time of WW2, Germans had authoritarian personality types, due to the punitive disciplinarian socialisation patterns that were common at that time
-Is often thought that people who carry out torture and genocide must be psychopaths HOWEVER research suggests that there is little psychological differences between them and ‘normal’ people e.g. Arendt’s study of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann showed him to be relatively normal, not even particularly anti-Semitic

Question 54

crimes of obedience

Answer 54

-State, crimes or crimes of conformity since they require obedience to a higher authority- the state or its representative
-research suggest that many people are willing to obey authority, even when this involves harming others- such actions are part of a role into which individuals are socialised (focus on social conditions in which atrocities become acceptable or even required)

Question 55

Green and Ward: crimes of obedience

Answer 55

-in order to overcome norms against the use of cruelty individuals who become tortures 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 the outside society, which allows the torturer to regards as a ‘9 to 5’ job from which you can return to normal every day life

Question 56

Kelman and Hamilton: crimes of obedience

Answer 56

-From a study of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, where a platoon of American soldiers killed 400 civilians, they identify three general features that produce crimes of obedience:
(1) authorisation: when acts are ordered or approved by those and authority, normal, more principles are replaced by the duty to obey
(2) routinisation: once the crime has been committed, there is a strong pressure to turn the act into a routine that individuals can perform in a detached manner
(3) dehumanisation: when the enemies portrayed as sub-human, normal principles of morality, do not apply

Question 57

Modernity: Bauman

Answer 57

-it was certain key features of modern society that made the holocaust possible:
(1) a division of labour: each person was responsible for just one small task, so no one felt personally responsible for the atrocity
(2) bureaucratisation: normalise the killing by making it a repetitive rule-governed and routine ‘job’ . It also meant that the victims could be dehumanised as mere ‘units’
(3) instrumental rationality: where rational efficient methods are used to achieve a goal, regardless of what the goal is. In modern business ago is profit in the Holocaust, it was murder.
(4) science and technology: from the railways, transporting victims to the death camps to the industrial produced gas used to kill them

-The holocaust, was a modern industrialised mass production ‘factory’ system, where the product was mass murder

Question 58

Explanations of state crime: evaluation

Answer 58

): not all genocide, occur through a highly organised division of labour that allows participants to distance themselves from the killing e.g. The rewind genocide was carried out directly by large marauding groups.
): ideological factors are also important- Nazi ideology, stressed, a single monolithic German racial identity that excluded minority such as Jews, Gypsies and Slavs who were defined as inferior or even subhuman, which meant they did not need to be treated according to normal standards or morality
-Thus while the modern rational division of labour may have supplied the means for the holocaust. It was racist ideology that supply the motivation to carry it out
-A decade of anti-Semitic. Propaganda proceeded the mass murders of the Jews, and help to create many willing participants and many more sympathetic bystanders.

Question 59

Cohen: culture of denial

Answer 59

-argues that as recent years have seen the growing impact of the international human rights movement (Alvarez), states now have to make a greater effort to conceal or justify their human rights crimes or re-label them as not crimes and they do this by using a ‘spiral of state denial’
-Stages:
(1) ‘ it didn’t happen’- my gosh state will claim there was no massacre and then media human rights organisations will show it did happen
(2) if it did happen, “it” is something else e.g. It was self-defence not murder.
(3) even if it is what you say, it is justified e.g. To fight the ‘war on terror’

Question 60

Sykes and Matza: techniques of neutralisation

Answer 60

-ways of justifying their deviant behaviour
-Cohen draws on the work of Sykes and Matza who identify five neutralisation techniques at the delinquents used to justify their behaviour
-Cohen shows how the states use the same techniques to justify human rights violation:
Denial of victim
Denial of injury
Denial of responsibility
Condemning the condemners
Appeal to higher loyalty

Question 61

denial of victim

Answer 61

-‘They exaggerate; they are terrorists; they are used to violence; look what they do to each other’

Question 62

denial of injury

Answer 62

‘ we are the real victims, not them’

Question 63

denial of responsibility

Answer 63

‘ I was only obeying orders doing my duty’
-This justification is often used by individual policeman, death camp guards etc.

Question 64

Condemning the condemners

Answer 64

-‘they are condemning us only because of their anti-Semitism (Israeli version) their hostility to Islam (Arabic version), their racism’

Question 65

appeal to higher loyalty

Answer 65

-self-righteous justifications that claim to be serving a higher cause with the nation, Zionism Islam, the defence of the ‘free world’, national security etc.

Question 66

Cohen: techniques of neutralisation

Answer 66

-They don’t deny it, occurred, but seek to impose a different construction of the event from what might appear to be the case- to normalise torture
e.g. in its war on terror, the USA had to publicly justify its coercive interrogation practices, which Cohen describes, as ‘ torture lite’ e.g. hooding shaking sleep deprivation, the use of stress positions and ‘water boarding’ (simulated drowning)
-The US claim that these techniques were not tortured because they mainly induced stress and were not physically or psychologically damaging
-Cohen sees this as a neutralisation technique aimed at normalising torture