Globalisation, Mass Media and Crime Flashcards
What are some examples of transnational organised crime?
AO2
- Human trafficking: traffickers can now lure women under the guise of job adverts in foreign countries. Trafficking is now easier and a more lucrative business
- Castells: globalisation has led to a global criminal economy e.g. 21st century slavery, drug cartels, sex tourism
- Indian organ trafficking ring sent vulnerable Indonesians to turkey for kidney transplants. Arranged fake family relationships between recipitents and donors with each kidney earning £37,000
- 9/11
How has globalisation impacted crime according to Newburn?
AO1
- Can reduce the power of the nation state - individual countries no longer have complete control over citizens e.g. rise of bedroom radicals
- Has led to new ways to commit crime - we can take advantage of different laws in different countries e.g. tax evasion
- Created an awareness of a risk from foreign countries - Beck: ‘risk society’ - we are exposed to more risk as the threat from other countries gets closer e.g. hacking, terrorism
What sociologists talk about global criminal networks?
AO1/2
- Hobbs and Dunningham: Glocal crime - globalised crime networks rely on local knowledge. These networks create hubs around legitimate and illigetimate businesses and create crime networks with local contacts across the world e.g. Colombian cocaine networks, Sinaloa cartel in Mexico and Guatemala
- Farr: 2 main forms of global crime networks: 1) established mafias e.g. Italian mafia 2) newer organised crime groups - result of globalisation, tend to be different ethnicities, typically eastern europeans who are happy to work outside their ethnicity and form a transnational criminal netowkr e.g. Hellbanianz who are based in Barking and control London’s cocaine trade and much of Europe’s - use social media to recruit members and legitimise their business through music
- Glenny: McMafia - illegitimate groups are beginning to mirror legitimate businesses in the way they mass produce products sold around the globe - drugtrade mirrors the way the same Big Mac is accessible across the globe
What is Lash and Urry’s theory?
AO1
Disorganised capitalism:
- There are fewer regulations and less state control
- Businesses can now take advantage of trade laws and the relaxed laws of other countries
- The nation state has lost its authority and manage potential issues
What is Taylor’s theory?
AO1
- Capitalism creates wider inequalities that lead both the rich and poor to commit crime - poor out of necessity and rich out of greed
- Globalisation allows companies to outsource cheap labour which mean the WC here lack legitimate opportunities - turning to illegitimate means becomes more rational
- Globalisation of money markets makes insider trading, tax evasion, and wide-scale fraud more accessible to the wealthy
What are some examples of Lash and Urry or Taylor’s theories?
AO2
- By 2012, 25,000 people had died and 120,000 people were still suffering as a result of the 1984 Bhopal Disaster - it took until 2010 for just 7 former employees to be sentenced with just 2 years imprisonment and a $2,000 fine each as this was the max Indian law would allow - shows businesses taking advantage of other country’s poor regulations
- 2013 Rana Plaza Disaster
- Winlow: Sunderland bouncers - globalisation > outsourcing labour > men losing traditional manufacturing jobs > masculinity crisis > turn to careers like bouncing + overcompensate by committing ‘tough’ crimes e.g. assault and crimes for financial gain e.g. drug selling to show that they can still provide
How can we analyse Lash and Urry or Taylor?
AO3
- 2016 Panama Papers: 11.5million leaked documents revealed that even royal family members and David Cameron’s father had been taking advantage of laws t commit global fraud and tax evasion
- Colombian cocaine trade: produced in Colombia and transferred through vountries like Nigeria and South Africa to consumers like the US and Europe
- Afghanistan is a large heroine producer - UNODC estimates smuggling heroine from Afghanistan to Russia is worth $13billion
What is Young’s theory?
AO1/2
- Cultural globalisation and consumerist ideology is pushed upon people across the globe as lavish lifestyles can be projected from anywhere onto anyone
- Young: this leads to a global ‘bulimic society’ as individuals are constantly exposed to the ‘better’ lives people in other countries have
- This leads to illegal immigration as people take advantage of globalisation making it easier to move and leave their countries to experience the better lives people abroad have
What is Bauman’s theory?
AO1
- Neoliberalism = reduction of welfare and regulation on financial markets
- Current society is more neoliberal causing us to become more individualistic
- Happiness is now the responsibility of the individual
- Having a safe, secure, living environment is no longer the government’s responsibility
- This leads to illegal immigration as people take improving their living conditions into their own hands
- e.g. illegal migrants who pay to be trafficked onto small boats into the UK
What is Beck’s theory?
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We now live in a global risk society
- This affects EVERYONE - not just the WC
- We are all at more risk of crime e.g. green crime led to more pollution
- e.g. more people are in precarious employment due to outsourcing labour - greater risk of unemployment/poverty due to less job security
How can we evaluate the impact of globalisation on crime?
AO3
- Explains both crimes of the rich and the poor which other theories cannot do e.g. Functionalists and Realists focus on WC crime
- McMafia was turned into a show which was used to highlight the extent of global organised crime networks - positive contribution to sociology/society (this could be analysis too)
- There has been a global response to crime e.g. INTERPOL, UN, etc - globalisation has also led to the prevention of crime
- Organised crime networks are dangerous and difficult to investigate so all conclusions are based on very little first hand data - may not be representative or in depth
- OCS show crime is decreasing when globalisation is increasing - if anything it makes more sense for there to be a negative correlation between them - doesn’t follow for globalisation to be the cause
- Most crime is local - the extent of global crime is exaggerated
What is Cohen’s theory of the media and crime?
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Deviancy amplification:
- The media sensationalise the extent of a certain crime/ threat from a certain group
- This leads to certain groups being labelled as deviant/criminal
- This leads to a moral panic where the police target certain groups who become folk devils
- This creates tension between the group, the police, and society thus causing more crime
- e.g. in ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’ Cohen found that the initial mods and rockers conflict caused “at most £200” in damage but “if there had been an international incident that day the newspapers wouldn’t have reported it”
What is Hall’s example of a moral panic?
AO2
- In the 70s there had been a winter of discontent - bin men and grave diggers were on strike, economic crisis, harsh winter
- The media amplified black crime and rcreated the myth of the black mugger scapegoating black people for the failings of capitalism
- Black people were labelled as deviant even though black and white crime rates were the same
- This led to the police targetting black people thus causing black people to be overepresented in crime statistics
How can we analyse Cohen and Hall?
AO3
King:
- In the USA the likelihood of a white person being a victim of violent crime had decreased by 22% in the last 10 years
- But in 2013 the dominant storyline in US media was of ‘the knockout game’ - random black on white assaults despite no statistical increase in said attacks
- This created a moral panic
How can we evaluate Cohen?
AO3
- Maffesoli: neotribes - we are no longer part of just 1 subculture - young people have more choice of what subcultures to join and how involved they may be - due to this fragmentation it is harder for the media to attibute deviant/criminal labels to a particular group
- McRobbie and Thornton: the media have moved on from stirring moral panics - social media means that we have more control over narratives in the media
