Globalisation and crime in contemporary society; Mass media and crime; green crime; human rights crime and state 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 vice versa.

Question 2

What has caused globalisation ?

Answer 2

spread of new information, media technologies, especially the internet and satellite television, cheap air travel, mass tourism, mass migration and the increase in the number of transnational corporations that produce and market their goods and brands in a global marketplace.

Question 3

How has globalisation affected crime ?

Answer 3

There is an increasing interconnectedness of crime across national borders. It has brought around the spread of transnational organised crime. It has created new ways and opportunities to commit crime e.g. cyber crimes

Question 4

Castells argues that there is a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion. Give some examples of how it takes its form.

Answer 4

Arms trafficking

• Smuggling of illegal immigrants- Chinese triad make an estimated 2.5 billion annually.
• Cyber crimes- identity theft and child pornography
• Sex tourism- westerns travel to third world countries for sex, sometimes involving minors
• international terrorism
• Drugs trade- $300-400 billion annually at street prices.
• Money laundering- profits up to 1.5 trillion a year from organised crime.

Question 5

What is ‘glocal’ crime and who spoke of it ?

Answer 5

Hobbs and Dunningham- locally based crime but it’s likely to have global connections e.g. illegal drugs trade, sex trafficking for prostitution and counterfeiting designer goods.

Question 6

Why is global crime difficult to police ?

Answer 6

international laws are ill defined and international criminal justice agencies do not have the global powers to pursue global criminals. Also cooperation between international agencies is limited by conflict between local and international police agencies and conflict between governments.

Question 7

Define green crime ?

Answer 7

crime against the environment

Question 8

why is it seen as form of global crime ? (2 reasons)

Answer 8

Planet is regarded as a single ecosystem in which we are all interconnected and interdependent. If you harm one aspect of the ecosystem you will be affecting and harming everything.

Generally carried out by powerful interests from transnational corporations such as oil and chemical companies working with the cooperation with national states and local wealthy elites.

Question 9

What are manufactured risks and what does Beck say about them ?

Answer 9

Human made threats rather than natural threats.

Beck says they are the result of the massive demand for consumer goods and the technology that underpins it.

Question 10

Identify the two main reasons why green crime is difficult to police ?

Answer 10

There are very few local or international laws governing the state of the environment. International laws are particularly difficult to construct because not all countries agree to sign up to global agreements.

Many of the laws that do exist are shaped by powerful capitalist interests, especially big global businesses. governments, especially in the developing world, are generally reluctant to rein in transnational corporations because they are dependent on the income these companies generate.

Question 11

Nigel south identified two types of green crime, what are they ?

Answer 11

primary and secondary.

Question 12

What is primary green crime ?

Answer 12

crimes that are the direct result of the destruction and degradation of the planets resources e.g. deforestation- illegal logging, air pollution- industrial carbon and green house gases.

Question 13

What is secondary green crime ?

Answer 13

crimes that involve flouting existing laws and regulations. e.g. state violence against oppositional groups and hazardous waste and organised crime.

Question 14

What is green criminology ?

Answer 14

Green criminology is a branch of criminology that involves the study of harms and crimes against the environment

Question 15

What does green criminology believe?

Answer 15

Takes a radical approach. It starts from the notion of harm rather than criminal law.

Question 16

White (2008) argues what about green criminology ?

Answer 16

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 most of the worst environmental harms are not illegal, and so the subject matter of green criminology is much wider than that of traditional criminology.

Question 17

Evaluate Green criminology.

Answer 17

Green criminology recognises the growing importance of environmental issues and manufactured global risks.
It recognises the interdependence of humans, other species and the environment.
However, it focus on harm rather than criminality means that green criminology is often accused of being engaged with subjective interpretation rather than objective scientific analysis, and is therefore bias.

Question 18

Define state crime ?

Answer 18

Penny Green and Tony Ward (2005) 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 include genocide, ware crimes, torture, imprisonment without trial and assassination.

Question 19

Mclaughlin (2001) identified 4 types of state crimes, what are they ?

Answer 19

political e.g. corruption and censorship, crimes by security and police forces e.g. genocide and torture, economic crimes e.g. official violations of health and safety laws and social and cultural crimes e.g. institutional racism.

Question 20

State crime is one of the most serious forms of crime for two reason, identify them?

Answer 20

the scale of state crimes and the state is the source of law.

Question 21

Explain the scale of state crimes and the state is the source of law.

Answer 21

The scale of state crime refers to the power that the state has which enables it to commit extremely large scale crimes with widespread victimisation. For example Cambodia 1975-1978, the Khmer Rouge government of Pol pot is believed to have killed up to two million people- a fifth of the country’s entire population.

The state is the source of law refers to the states role in defining what is criminal, managing the criminal justice system and prosecuting offenders. Its power to make the law also means that it can avoid defining its own actions as criminal. For example Nazi Germany, the state created the law permitting people to sterilise disabled people against their will.

Question 22

What do most definitions of humans rights include ?

Answer 22

natural rights and civil rights.

Question 23

What are natural rights ?

Answer 23

Natural rights, are rights that people are regarded having simply by the virtue of existing.

Question 24

What are civil rights ?

Answer 24

Civil rights are rights such as the right to vote, right to privacy and the right to education.

Question 25

Hoe does Herman and Schwendinger (1970) argue we should define crime ?

Answer 25

in terms of the violation of breaking human rights, rather than the breaking of legal rules. This means that states that deny individual humans rights must be regarded as criminal.

Question 26

why does Cohen criticise this view ?

Answer 26

He argues that while gross violations of human rights such as genocide etc, are clearly crimes, other acts such as economic exploitation, are not self evidently criminal, even if we find them morally unacceptable.

Question 27

Cohen is particularly interested in what ?

Answer 27

the ways in which states conceal and legitimise their human rights crimes. He argues that while dictatorships deny committing human rights abuses, democratic states have to legitimise their actions in more complex ways, of which Cohen calls the spiral of denial.

Question 28

Explain the spiral of denial ?

Answer 28

The spiral of denial is a 3 stage justification process which starts off with stage 1 being the ‘It didn’t happen’ stage. This is where the state will claim there was no massacre for example. But then human rights movements and the media will show it did happen. Stage 2 is then ‘ If it did happen’. This stage is where that state tries to justify it by claiming it’s not what it looks like e.g. it was self defence. Then finally there is stage 3, ‘even if it what you say it is’. This is the stage where the state to to justify the action by claiming it was for a good cause etc e.g. to protect national security.

Question 29

Cohen examines the ways in which states and their officials deny or justify their crimes. He draws on the work of Sykes and Matza (1957), who identify five neutralisation techniques, what are they ?

Answer 29

denial of the victim, denial of injury, denial of responsibility, condemning the condemners and the appeal to higher loyalty.

Question 30

Explain the denial of the victim and the denial of injury,

Answer 30

The denial of the victim is where they exaggerate that they are used to violence but comparing what they do to each other. Secondly the denial of injury, is where the state try and claim they’re the victims as they didn’t start it.

Question 31

Explain the denial of responsibility and condemning the condemners

Answer 31

The denial of responsibility is where the state claims they were only doing what they need to do to keep safe or that they were just following orders. Condemning the condemners is where they claim they’re being picked on and that what’s happening is worse elsewhere.

Question 32

Explain the appeal to higher loyalty.

Answer 32

This is the self righteous justification- the appeal to the higher cause, whether it’s the nation, the revolution or the state of security, they will ask them to provide some justification for the actions they have committed.

Question 33

Cohen says that these techniques seek to what ?

Answer 33

they seek to negotiate or impose a different construction of the event from what actually happened or what might appear to be the case.

Question 34

How does the media give a distorted image of crime ?

Answer 34

They over represent violent and sexual crimes- Ditton and Duffy found that 46% of media reports were to do with violent or sexual crimes when they only make up 3% of crimes reported by police.
The media overplay extraordinary crimes - Felson dramatic fallacy.

Question 35

How has has the type of coverage changed ?

Answer 35

in the 1960’s the focus was on murder and petty crime, where as by 1990s murder and petty crime were of less interest to the media.

Question 36

Why did the change in coverage come around ?

Answer 36

Partly because the abolition of the death penalty for murder and partly because rising crime rates meant that crime had to be special to attract media coverage.

Question 37

Is the news a social construction ?

Answer 37

yes- the news doesn’t just exist it isn’t out there waiting to written up by journalists, rather it’s the outcome of the social process in which stories are selected while others are rejected. Cohen and Young (1973) News is not discovered it’s manufactured.

Question 38

Central to the news coverage is news values, what are they ?

Answer 38

criteria which news have to meet before it can proceed to the next step of being published.

Question 39

identify the news values ?

Answer 39

Immediacy
dramatisation
personalisation
higher status
simplification
Novelty or unexpectedness
risk
violence

Question 40

Identify 4 ways the media might cause crime ?

Answer 40

Imitation- By providing deviant role models, resulting in copycat behaviour.
Desensitisation- By repetition of violence
Glamorising offending
Stimulating desires for unaffordable goods e.g. through advertising.

Question 41

Does the media create fear of crime ?

Answer 41

Yes. Gerbner found they heavy users of TV had higher levels of fear of crime. Similarly Schlesinger and Tumber (2002) found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime, with tabloid readers and heavy users of TV expressing greater fear of becoming victims of crime.

Question 42

What is a moral panic ?

Answer 42

an exaggerated over reaction by society to a perceived problem driven from the media.

Question 43

identify the three basic steps of a moral panic ?

Answer 43

The media identifies a group as ‘folk devils’
The present the group in a negative , stereotypical fashion to exaggerate the problem.
respectable people condemn the group for its behaviour.

Question 44

The three steps of a moral panic may lead to two outcomes explain both ?

Answer 44

It may lead to a crackdown on the group. However it may lead to a self fulling prophecy that amplifies the problem that caused the panic in the beginning.

Question 45

The most influential study of moral panics comes from Cohen, but what does he examine ?

Answer 45

The media’s response to disturbances between two groups of largely working class teenagers, Mods & Rockers.

Question 46

The media over reacted in 1964 two what event which made the distinction between mods and rockers more distinct ?

Answer 46

wet cold Easter weekend in Clacton with a few scuffles, some stone throwing, few wrecked beach huts and a few windows were broken.

Question 47

Cohen says there are 3 stages where the media produce an inventory of what happened ?

Answer 47

Exaggeration or distortion- media exaggerates numbers, damage, extent of violence etc.

Prediction- they further predict more conflict and violence

symbolisation- Items that characterised Mods and Rockers are negatively labelled and associated with deviance.

Question 48

Cohen argues that the creation of the inventory leads to what ?

Answer 48

deviance amplification spiral.

Question 49

Give examples of how the media created a deviance amplification spiral ?

Answer 49

defining the two groups and their subcultural styles. This leads to more youth adopting these styles and drew in more future clashes. The media emphasised the distinct differences and created two tight-knit gangs instead of two loose-knit groups. This encouraged polarisation and helped create a self fulling prophecy as deviance escalated in youths by them acting out the roles assigned to them by the media.

Question 50

Cohen argues that media definitions are crucial in creating a moral panic, why ?

Answer 50

in large scale modern societies people have no direct experience of the situation and thus rely on the media’s information about them.

Question 51

How has the idea of moral panics been criticised ?

Answer 51

• They assume that societies reaction is a disproportionate over-reaction- but who is to decide what is a appropriate reaction ? Left realist view that peoples fear of crime is in fact rational !
• What turns the amplifier on and off ? why are the media able to amplify some problems into a panic but not others?
• McRobbie and Thornton argue that moral panics are now routine and have less impact. Also that is late modern societies, there is little consensus about what is deviant.