Globalisation, Green Crime, Human Rights and State Crime

Question 1

What is globalisation?

Answer 1

• The interconnectedness of society and blurring of international boundaries between countries.

Question 2

What has caused globalisation?

Give at least two examples.

Answer 2

At least two from:

• The spread of new information and communication technologies (ICT).
• Cheap air travel.
• The influence of global mass media.

Question 3

Complete the following sentences:

There has been a globalisation of crime – an increasing interconnectedness of _____ across _____ borders. The same processes that have brought about globalisation of legitimate activities have also brought about the spread of ______ organised crime. Globalisation creates new _______ for crime, new means of committing crime and new ________, such as various cyber-crimes.

Answer 3

• Crime
• National
• Transnational
• Opportunities
• Offences

Question 4

Complete the following sentences:

The global ______ economy has both a ______ 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.

Answer 4

• Criminal

- Demand

Question 5

Complete the following sentences:

• The supply is linked to the _____ process. For example, third world drugs-producing countries such as Columbia, Peru and Afghanistan have large ______ of _______ peasants. For these groups, drug cultivation is an _______ option that requires little _______ in technology and commands high prices compared with traditional crops. In Columbia for instance, an estimated _____ of the population depends on cocaine production for their ________, and cocaine outsells all Columbia’s other exports combined. To understand drug crime, we cannot confine our attention merely to the countries where drugs are consumed.

Answer 5

• Globalisation
• Populations
• Impoverished
• Attractive
• Investment
• 20%
• Livelihood

Question 6

Complete the following sentence:

• Globalisation creates new insecurities and produces a new mentality of ‘risk consciousness’ in which _____ is seen as _____ rather than tied to particular places.

Answer 6

• Risk

- Global

Question 7

Complete the following sentence:
The increased ______ of people, as economic migrants seeking work or as asylum seekers fleeing prosecution, has given rise to anxieties among populations in western countries about the risks of _____ and disorder and the need to _____ their borders.

Answer 7

• Movement
• Crime
• Protect

Question 8

Where does match of the knowledge about the risks of crime and globalisation come from?

Answer 8

• The media

Question 9

Complete the following sentence:

In the case of _______, the media create ______ panics about the supposed ‘threat’, often fuelled by politicians. Negative coverage of immigrants has led to _____ crimes against minorities in several European countries including the UK.

Answer 9

• Immigration
• Moral
• Hate

Question 10

Complete the following sentences:
- One ______ of this, is the intensification of _______ control at the national level. The UK has toughened its border control regulations, for example, fining airlines if they bring in undocumented passengers. Also, the UK now has no legal limits on how long a person may be held in immigration detention.

Answer 10

• Result

- Social

Question 11

What is state crime?

Answer 11

• Crime committed by or on behalf of states and governments in order to further their policies.

Question 12

Why is state crime scene is the most serious type of crime?

Give at least one reason.

Answer 12

• The states enormous power gives it the potential to inflict harm on a huge scale.
• 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.

Question 13

How can the theory of domestic law to define state crime be evaluated?
Give at least one example.

Answer 13

• Using a state owned domestic law to define state crime is in adequate. It is 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 disabled people.
• This definition also lead to inconsistencies. For example the same act may be illegal on one side of the border but not on the other.

Question 14

How can the theory of social harms and zeminology be evaluated when defining state crime?
Give at least one example.

Answer 14

• This definition prevents the state 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 well-being.
• 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.

Question 15

Complete the following sentence:

• Labelling theory argues that whether an act _______ 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.

Answer 15

• Constitutes

Question 16

The labelling definition of state crime recognises that it is _______ constructed, and so what people regard as a state crime can vary over ______ and between _____ 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.

Answer 16

• Socially
• Time
• Cultures

Question 17

How can the labelling theory perspective of defining state crime be evaluated?
Give at least one example.

Answer 17

At least one from:

• This definition is even vaguer than ‘social harms’.
• 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 war as legitimate rather than criminal.

Question 18

What is international law?

Answer 18

• Law created through treaties and agreements between states.

Question 19

How can the international law perspective of defining state crime be evaluated?
Give at least one example.

Answer 19

At least one from:

• The advantage of this is that it does not depend on the sociologist’s own personal definition 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 internationally designed to deal with state crime, unlike most domestic law.
• However, like the laws made by individual states, international law is a social construction involving the use of power.
• Another limitation is that international law largely focuses on war crimes and crimes against humanity, rather than other state crimes such as corruption

Question 20

What are human rights?

Answer 20

• Natural rights that people have simply by virtue of existing such as the right to life, liberty and free speech, whilst civil rights refer to the right to vote, the right to privacy or the right to education.

Question 21

How can the human rights perspective of defining state crime be evaluated?
Give at least one example.

Answer 21

At least one from:

• Rosse et al (1999) argue that one advantage of this this definition is that virtually all states care about the human rights image, because these rights are now global social norms. This makes them susceptible to ‘shaming’ as this can provide leverage to make them respect their citizens’ rights.
• Stanley Cohen (1996; 2001) criticises this view. While gross violations of human rights, such as torture, are clearly crimes, other acts, such as economic exploitation, or not self-evidently criminal, even if we find the 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.

Question 22

Complete the following sentences:

• Crime is usually defined as deviance from _____ norms. However, state crimes are of conformity, since they require _______ to a higher authority – the state or its representative.

Answer 22

• Social

- Obedience

Question 23

Complete the following sentences:

• Research suggests that many people are ______ to obey _____ even when it involves _____ others. Sociologists argue that such actions are part of a role into which individuals are ______. They focus on the social conditions in which atrocities become acceptable or even required.

Answer 23

• Willing
• Obey
• Harming
• Socialised

Question 24

How can theories and ways of explaining state crime be evaluated?
Give at least one example.

Answer 24

At least one from:

• Not all genocides occur through a highly organised division of labour that allows participants to distance themselves from the killing.
• Ideological factors are also important. Nazi ideology stressed a single, mono lithic German racial identity that excluded minorities such as Jews, Gypsies and Slavs, who were defined as inferior or even subhuman. This meant they did not need to be treated according to normal standards of morality.
• 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 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.

Question 25

When did the Holocaust of Nazi Germany take place?

Answer 25

• 1930s and 1940s

Question 26

What did the Holocaust of Nazi Germany want to achieve?

Answer 26

• The attempted cleansing of the population in Germany, killing 6 million people including Jews and gay people.

Question 27

What was the motivation for the Holocaust of Nazi Germany?

Answer 27

• The idea that the Jews were too wealthy, so there was an attempt to try and give the wealth back to German people.

Question 28

When did the nasty treatment of Kurdish people in Turkey take place?

Answer 28

• 1980s and 1990s

Question 29

Complete the following sentences:

• Kurds have had a long history of ______ perpetrated against them by the ______ government. Many people who _____, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and _______. Since the lifting of the ban in ______, the Kurdish population of Turkey has long sought to have Kurdish included as a language of instruction in _____ schools as well as a subject. Currently, it’s _____ to use the Kurdish language as an instruction language in private and public schools, yet there are schools who defy this ban.

Answer 29

• Discrimination
• Turkish
• Spoke
• Imprisoned
• 1991
• Public
• Illegal

Question 30

When did the genocide in Cambodia take place, and what happened?

Answer 30

• 1995
• A fifth of the population in Cambodia was killed. This was based on political views and didn’t matter if you were a child, a mother, a woman etc.

Question 31

What is Guantánamo Bay?

Answer 31

A detention centre.

Question 32

What is green/enviromental crime?

Answer 32

• Crime against against the environment.

Question 33

What do environment crimes cause?

Answer 33

• Global warming.

Question 34

Give at least two examples of environmental/green crimes?

Answer 34

• Burning fossil fuels.
• Increasing car usage.
• Slash and burn of forests.
• Increasing methane from landfill.
• Deforestation.

Question 35

Complete the following sentences:

Traditional criminology has not been concerned with such behaviour, since its subject ______ is defined by the criminal law, and no law has been ______. The starting point for this approach is the national and international laws and regulations concerning the environment.

Answer 35

• Matter

- Broken

Question 36

What does traditional criminology do?

Answer 36

• Investigate the the patterns and causes of law breaking.

Question 37

What is the main advantage of the traditional criminology approach?

Answer 37

• It has a clearly defined subject matter.

Question 38

How can the traditional criminology approach be criticised?

Answer 38

• Criticised for accepting official definitions of environmental problems and crimes, which are often shaped by powerful groups such as big businesses to serve their own interests.

Question 39

What type of approach does green criminology take?

Answer 39

• Radical approach and looks at the notion of harm rather than law breaking.

Question 40

Complete the following sentences:

Many of the _____ environmental harms are not ______, and so the subject matter of green criminology is much _____ than that of traditional criminology

Answer 40

• Worst
• Illegal
• Wider

Question 41

Complete the following sentences:

Green criminology is a form of _____ criminology. It ______ (transgresses) the boundaries of _______ criminology includes _____ issues.

Answer 41

• Transgressive
• Overlaps
• Traditional
• New

Question 42

Which other approach is green criminology similar to?

Answer 42

• Marxism

Question 43

Complete the following sentence:

Green criminology can develop a _______ perspective on environmental harm.

Answer 43

• Global

Question 44

What do green criminologists argue?

Answer 44

• That powerful interests, especially nation-state and transnational corporations, are able to define in their own interests what counts is unacceptable environmental harm.

Question 45

Wear are primary green crimes?

Answer 45

• Crimes that result directly from the destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources.

Question 46

What are secondary green crimes?

Answer 46

• Crime that grows out of the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters.

Question 47

How can green criminology be evaluated?

Answer 47

• It recognises the growing importance of environmental issues and the need to address the harms and risks of environmental damage, both to humans and nonhuman animals.
• By focusing on the much broader concept of harms rather than simply on the 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. Critics argue that this is a matter of values and cannot be established objectively.