Human rights and state crime

Question 1

Define state crime

Answer 1

illegal / deviant activities perpetrated by or with state agencies.

Question 2

State agencies examples

Answer 2

Armed forces, secret services, civil servants, police, prison service, government and politic leaders.

Question 3

State crime examples

Answer 3

Genocide
War crimes
Torture
Imprisonment without trial
assassination
Supporting terrorist activities
Invasion of countries with less power.

Question 4

McLaughlin (2001) identifies what four categories of state crime.

Answer 4

1. Political
2. crimes by security
3. Economic crimes
4. Social and cultural crime

Question 5

Define dictatorship

Answer 5

Government by a dictator, a ruler with total power over a country.

Question 6

Define democracy

Answer 6

System of government by whole population/all eligible members of a state, typically through a election.

Question 7

Define capitalism

Answer 7

Economic and political system where trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

Question 8

Define Communism

Answer 8

government will control the economy.

Question 9

Scale of state crime

Answer 9

The power of the state enables it to commit extremely large scale crimes with widespread victimisation.

Question 10

Scale of crime - Example

Answer 10

Combodia:
1975-1978
Khmer Rouge government of Pol Pot is believed to have killed up to 2 million people.
1/5 of the country’s population

Question 11

Michaloski and Kramer - ‘Great power and great crimes are inseparable’ state crime is…

Answer 11

The ways that economic and political elites can bring death, disease and loss to tens of thousands with a single decision, and can affect entire human groups through the creation of criminal systems of oppression and exploitation.

Question 12

Monopoly

Answer 12

The state’s monopoly of power=potential to inflict massive harm, conceals its crimes/evade punishment.

Question 13

Media attention

Answer 13

Mainly focuses on third world dictatorships, democratic states such as Britain and the US have been guilty of crimes such as the military use of torture in Northern Ireland or Iraq.

Question 14

State is the source of the law

Answer 14

State’s role to define what is criminal, and to manage the criminal justice system and prosecute offenders.
Undermines the system of justice.

Question 15

Herman and Schwendinger

Answer 15

• Critical criminologists

Question 16

Herman and Schwendinger - definition of crime

Answer 16

Define crime in terms of the violation of basic human rights, rather than the breaking of legal rules.
- States that deny individuals’ human rights must be regarded as Criminals.

Question 17

The state as a perpetrator

Answer 17

Any state which allows discrimination of being a human is essentially violating human rights, thus they are perpetrators of crime.

Question 18

Definition of crime is inevitably political.

Answer 18

1930’s the Nazi state attacked the human rights of Jews and other German citizens.
legally.
passing the laws that persecuted them!