Green Crime and State Crime

Question 1

Who points out that the term was first used in traditional criminology to describe actions that break laws protecting the environment? And what is the problem with this view?

Answer 1

Wolf

Problem is that the same action may be illegal in some countries and not others and may change over time.

Question 2

Who argues green criminology should adopt a more transgressive approach going beyond simply law breaking?

Answer 2

Lynch and Stretsky

Question 3

What approach does White take about environmental crime?

Answer 3

He takes the environmental justice approach and considers environmental crime to be - any human action that causes environmental harm, whether illegal or not.

Question 4

Who says that the military is the largest polluter and claims warfare plays a major role in generating risk and environmental destruction? What examples do they give?

Answer 4

Santana

E.g. unexploded bombs and the nuclear arms race in the 20th century that generated millions of tons of nuclear waste

Question 5

Who argues that states are reluctant to pass environmental laws and only do so when pressured to by the public?

Answer 5

Snider

Question 6

What does Sutherland say about how green crimes compare to white collar crimes? And who does it link to?

Answer 6

Like what collar crimes, green crimes carry less stigma than conventional crimes so even where regulations exist they may not be enforced.
Links to Chambliss

Question 7

Who says that poor countries don’t have the political power or resources to enforce restrictions on things like the poaching of endangered species and dumping toxic materials. Also notes that green crime is motivated in the same way as other crime,rational choice - explain this

Answer 7

Wolf

Companies motivated to break laws because crime can reduce financial costs and hassle.

Question 8

What does Beck have to say about green crime in relation to risk society? Also give an example about what he is saying

Answer 8

Environmental disasters of the past were out of human control but in late modern society they are created by humans in a global risk society and environmental crime in one county has effects in many. E.g. the explosion at BP’s oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 caused extensive damage to wildlife and left thousands of square kilometers of polluted sea.

Question 9

Who says that nation states adopt an anthropocentric view of environmental harm, explain what this is. He also defines an ecocentric view, explain what this is.

Answer 9

White
Anthropocentric view of environmental harm - the view that humans have the right to dominate nature and put economic growth before the environment.
Ecocentric view - the view that humans and the environment are interdependent so environmental harm effects us to.

Question 10

Who describes primary and secondary green crimes and what are these?

Answer 10

South
Primary green crimes are ‘crimes that result directly from the destruction or degradation of the earths resources’ e.g. air pollution, water pollution and crime of species decline.
Secondary green crimes grow out of flouting the rules preventing environmental disasters e.g. hazardous waste

Question 11

Carbon emissions are growing at ..% per annum

Answer 11

2%

Question 12

… species a day are becoming extinct and ..-..% of earth’s species live in the rain forests which are under severe threat

Answer 12

50 species a day

70-95%

Question 13

… million die annually from drinking……

Answer 13

25 million

contaminated water

Question 14

Who describes how after tsunami of 2004 hundreds of barrels of radio active waste, illegally dumped by European countries washed up on Somalian shores?

Answer 14

Bridgeland

Question 15

How do Green and Ward define state crime? And give an example

Answer 15

Illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by or with the complicity of state agencies e.g. genocide, war, torture

Question 16

Who argues that states are increasingly assessed by the extent to which that they preserve human rights?

Answer 16

O’Byrne

Question 17

Who gives 4 categories of state crime and what are they? Give examples

Answer 17

McLaughin
political crimes like censorship
crimes by security and police like torture
economic crimes
social crimes like institutional racism

Question 18

Who says that ‘great power and great crimes are inseparable’ and claims that we need to study the way political elites can bring death and disease to thousands with a single decision, give an example

Answer 18

Michalowski and Kramer

e.g. in Cambodia between 1975-1978 the government of Pol Pot killed 2 million - 1/5 of it’s population

Question 19

How does Schwendinger believe we should define crime, what example does he give and what does he believe sociologists should defend?

Answer 19

We should define crime in terms of violations of human rights since if we accept a legal definition we become subservient to the state who define what is criminal. For example everything done in Nazi Germany was legal. Believed that sociologists should defend human rights, if necessary against the state.

Question 20

How does Schwendinger believe we should define crime, what example does he give and what does he believe sociologists should defend?

Answer 20

We should define crime in terms of violations of human rights since if we accept a legal definition we become subservient to the state who define what is criminal. For example everything done in Nazi Germany was legal. Believed that sociologists should defend human rights, if necessary against the state. Called this transgressive criminology which oversteps traditional boundaries of criminology that are defined by law.

Question 21

Who argues that while ‘gross’ violations of human rights are clearly crimes, others such as economic exploitation are not self-evidently criminal even if we find them morally unacceptable. Dictators can simply deny human right abuses but how do democratic states legitimate their actions?

Answer 21

Cohen
Democratic states first deny it happened until media or human rights groups show that it did, then they say if it did happen it isn’t what it looks like but self-defense. Then admitting that even if it was as said it was justified to protect national security for example.

Question 22

Whose techniques of neutralisation does Cohen apply to state violations of human rights and what does he say about this?

Answer 22

Matza
The state try to neutralise their crimes by re-labeling them as something else or excusing them as justifiable or by appeals to higher loyalties such as the need to stop terrorists. By these techniques they justify the human rights breach to themselves, those who carry out the acts and other countries

Question 23

Who studied crimes of obedience, give example, and said that states encourage obedience by authorisation - when acts are ordered by authority moral principles are replaced with the duty to obey. They define routinisation and dehumanisation, what do these mean?

Answer 23

Kelman and Hamilton
E.g. in Vietnam, American soldiers massacred 400 civilians
Routinisaton - after the act the actors learn to perform in a detached manner
Dehumanisation - the enemy is portrayed to them as subhuman

Question 24

Who argues the key to understanding the holocaust is the ability of modern society to dehumanise mass murder and turn into routine?

Answer 24

Bauman