Green Crime and State Crime Flashcards
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?
Wolf
Problem is that the same action may be illegal in some countries and not others and may change over time.
Who argues green criminology should adopt a more transgressive approach going beyond simply law breaking?
Lynch and Stretsky
What approach does White take about environmental crime?
He takes the environmental justice approach and considers environmental crime to be - any human action that causes environmental harm, whether illegal or not.
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?
Santana
E.g. unexploded bombs and the nuclear arms race in the 20th century that generated millions of tons of nuclear waste
Who argues that states are reluctant to pass environmental laws and only do so when pressured to by the public?
Snider
What does Sutherland say about how green crimes compare to white collar crimes? And who does it link to?
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
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
Wolf
Companies motivated to break laws because crime can reduce financial costs and hassle.
What does Beck have to say about green crime in relation to risk society? Also give an example about what he is saying
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.
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.
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.
Who describes primary and secondary green crimes and what are these?
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
Carbon emissions are growing at ..% per annum
2%
… species a day are becoming extinct and ..-..% of earth’s species live in the rain forests which are under severe threat
50 species a day
70-95%
… million die annually from drinking……
25 million
contaminated water
Who describes how after tsunami of 2004 hundreds of barrels of radio active waste, illegally dumped by European countries washed up on Somalian shores?
Bridgeland
How do Green and Ward define state crime? And give an example
Illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by or with the complicity of state agencies e.g. genocide, war, torture
Who argues that states are increasingly assessed by the extent to which that they preserve human rights?
O’Byrne
Who gives 4 categories of state crime and what are they? Give examples
McLaughin political crimes like censorship crimes by security and police like torture economic crimes social crimes like institutional racism
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
Michalowski and Kramer
e.g. in Cambodia between 1975-1978 the government of Pol Pot killed 2 million - 1/5 of it’s population
How does Schwendinger believe we should define crime, what example does he give and what does he believe sociologists should defend?
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.
How does Schwendinger believe we should define crime, what example does he give and what does he believe sociologists should defend?
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.
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?
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.
Whose techniques of neutralisation does Cohen apply to state violations of human rights and what does he say about this?
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
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?
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
Who argues the key to understanding the holocaust is the ability of modern society to dehumanise mass murder and turn into routine?
Bauman
