Sociology-crime-globalisation, green crime, human rights, state crime Flashcards
What is globalisation?
The growing interconnectedness of societies, so that what happens in one locality is shaped by distant events and vice versa
How does Held et al define globalisation?
As the widening, deepening and speeding up of world wide interconnectedness in all aspects of life, from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual
What are the causes of globalisation?
Globalisation has many causes, these include the spread of new information and communication technologies and the influence of global mass media, cheap air travel, the deregulation of financial and other markets and their opening up to competition, and easier movements so that businesses can easily relocate to countries where profits will be greater
What does Held et al suggest about crime?
There has also been a globalisation of crime-an increasing interconnectedness of crime across national borders. The same processes that have brought about the globalisation of legitimate activities have also brought about the spread of transnational organised crime. Globalisation creates new opportunities for crime, new means of committing crime and new offences, such as various cyber crimes
What does Castells argue about the result of globalisation?
There is now a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion per annum, which takes a number of forms
What are examples of crimes that are made possible by globalisation?
Arms trafficking, trafficking in nuclear materials, smuggling of illegal immigrants, trafficking in women and children, sex tourism, trafficking in body parts, cyber crimes, green crimes, international terrorism, smuggling of legal goods to evade taxes/sell to foreign markets, trafficking in cultural artefacts, trafficking in endangered species or their body parts, the drugs trade, and money laundering
What are the two parts to the global criminal economy?
It has a demand 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
What is the supply of the global criminal economy linked to?
The globalisation process. Eg Third World drugs-producing countries such as Colombia, Peru and Afghanistan have large populations of impoverished peasants. For these groups, drug cultivation is an attractive option that requires little investment in technology and commands high prices compared with traditional crops. In Colombia for instance, an estimated 20% of the population depends on cocaine production for their livelihood, and cocaine outsells all Colombia’s other exports combined. To understand drug crime, we cannot confine our attention merely to the countries where the drugs are consumed
What is ‘risk consciousness’?
Globalisation creates new insecurities and produces a new mentality of ‘risk consciousness’ in which risk is seen as global rather than tied to particular places. Eg the increased movement of people, as economic migrants seeking work or as asylum seekers fleeing persecution, has given rise to anxieties among populations in Western countries about the risks of crime and disorder and the need to protect their borders. Whether such fears are rational or not is a different matter
Where does knowledge of ‘risk consciousness’ come from?
Much of our knowledge about risks comes from the media, which often give an exaggerated view of the dangers we face. In the case of immigration, the media create moral panics about the supposed ‘threat’, often fuelled by politicians. Negative coverage of immigrants, portrayed as terrorists or as scroungers ‘flooding’ the country, has led to hate crimes against minorities in several European countries including the UK
What is a result of global risk consciousness?
The intensification of social control at national level. UK has toughened its border control regulations, eg fining airlines if they bring in undocumented passengers. Similarly, the UK now has no legal limits on how lone someone may be held in immigration detention. Other European stats with land borders have introduced fences, CCTV, and thermal imaging devices to prevent illegal crossings. Another result of globalised risk is the increased attempts at international cooperation and control in the various ‘wars’ on terror, drugs and crime-particularly since the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001
What does Taylor argue about globalisation?
Writing from a socialist perspective, he argues globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime. By giving free rein to market forces, globalisation has created greater inequality and rising crime
How has globalisation created crime at both ends of the social spectrum?
It has allowed transnational corporations to switch manufacturing low-wage countries, producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty. Deregulation means that governments have little control over their own economies, eg to create jobs or raise taxes, while state spending on welfare has declined. Marketisation has encouraged people to see themselves as individual consumers, calculating the personal costs and benefits of each action, undermining social cohesion. As left realists note, the increasingly materialistic culture promoted by the global media portrays success in terms of a lifestyle of consumption
What do factors of globalisation and crime create?
Insecurity and widening inequalities that encourage people, especially the poor, to turn to crime. The lack of legitimate job opportunities destroys self-respect and drives the unemployed to look for illegitimate ones, for instance, in the lucrative drugs trade. Eg in Los Angeles, de-industrialisation has led to growth of drugs gangs numbering 10,000 members
At the same time, how does globalisation create criminal opportunities on a grand scale for elite groups?
Eg the deregulation of financial markets has created opportunities for insider trading and movement of funds around the globe to avoid taxation. Similarly, the creation of transnational bodies such as the European Union has offered opportunities for fraudulent claims for subsidies, estimated at over $7 billion per annum in the EU
How has globalisation affected employment?
It has led to new patterns of employment, which have created new opportunities for crime. It has led to increased use of subcontracting to recruit ‘flexible’ workers, often working illegally or employed for less than the minimum wage or working in breach of health and safety or other labour laws
Why is Taylor’s theory useful?
It is useful in linking global trends in the capitalist economy to changes in the pattern of crime. However, it does not adequately explain how the changes make people behave in criminal ways. Eg, not all poor people turn to crime
What do Rothe and Friedrichs look at?
They examine the role of international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, in what they call ‘crimes of globalisation’
What are international organisations?
These organisations are dominated by major capitalist states. Eg the World Bank has 188 member countries, yet just five (USA, Japan, Germany, Britain, France) hold over a third of voting rights
What do Rothe and Friedrichs argue about these international organisations?
They impose pro-capitalist, neoliberal economic ‘structural adjustment programmes’ on poor countries as a condition for the loans they provide. These programmes often require governments to cut spending on health and education, and to privatise publicly-owned services (such as water supply), industries and natural resources. While this allows Western corporations to expand into these countries, it creates conditions for crime
What did Rothe et al show?
They showed how the programme imposed on Rwanda in the 1980s caused mass unemployment and created the economic basis for the 1994 genocide
What does Cain suggest?
In some ways, the IMF and World Bank act as a ‘global state’ and, while they may not break any laws, their actions can cause widespread social harms both directly, through cutting welfare spending, and indirectly, as in the Rwandan case
What are examples of how globalisation and de-industrialisation have created new criminal opportunities and patterns at a local level?
Winlow’s study of bouncers in Sunderland. Also a study of post-industrial town by Hobbs and Dunningham, who found that thew ay crime is organised is linked to the economic changes brought by globalisation. Increasingly, it involves individuals with contacts acting as a ‘hub’ around which a loose-knit network forms, composed of other individuals seeking opportunities, and often linking legitimate and illegitimate activities. Hobbs and Dunningham argue this contrasts with the large-scale, hierarchical ‘Mafia’-style criminal organisations of the past, such as that headed by the Kray brothers in East End of London
What are ‘glocal’ organisations?
New forms of organisation sometimes have international links, especially with the drugs trade, but crime is still rooted in its local context. Eg individuals still need local contracts and networks to find opportunities and to sell their drugs. Hobbs and Dunningham conclude crime works as a ‘glocal’ system. It is locally based still, but with global connections. This means the form it takes will vary from place to place, according to local conditions, even if it is influenced by global factors such as availability of drugs from abroad
What do Hobbs and Dunningham conclude about patterns of criminal organisation?
Changes associated with globalisation have led to changes in patterns of crime. However, it is not clear that such patterns are new, nor that the older structures have disappeared. It may be that the two have always co-existed. Equally their conclusions may not be generalisable to other criminal activities elsewhere
What is another example of the relationship between criminal organisation and globalisation?
What Glenny calls ‘McMafia’. This refers to the organisations that emerged in Russia and Eastern Europe following the fall of communism-itself a major factor in the process of globalisation
What does Glenny trace the origins of transnational organised crime back to?
The break-up of the Soviet Union after 1989, which coincided with the deregulation of global markets. Under communism, Soviet state had regulated prices of everything, but following fall of communism, Russian government deregulated most sectors of economy except for natural resources such as oil. These commodities remained at old Soviet prices, often only a 40th of world market price. Anyone with access to funds, such as former communist officials and KGB generals, could buy up oils, gas, diamonds or metals for next to nothing. Selling them abroad at an astronomical profit, these individuals became Russia’s new capitalist class, often popularly referred to as ‘oligarchs’
What did the collapse of the communist state lead to a period of?
A period of increasing disorder. To protect their wealth, capitalists therefore turned to ‘mafias’ that had begun to spring up. These were often alliances between former KGB men and ex-convicts. Among the most ruthless were the Chechen mafia
How were these mafias unlike the old Italian and American mafias?
The old mafias were based on ethnic and family ties, with a clear-cut hierarchy. The new Russian mafias were purely economic organisations formed to pursue self-interest. Eg the Chechen mafia originated in Chechnya, but soon began to ‘franchise’ its operations to non-Chechen groups. ‘Chechen mafia’ became a brand name that they sold to protection rackets in other towns, so long as they always carried out their word, otherwise the brand would be damaged
How did these mafias help globalise crime?
With the assistance of these fluid and violent organisations, the billionaires were able to find protection for their wealth and a means of moving it out of the country. Criminal organisations were vital to the entry of the new Russian capitalist class in the world economy. At the same time, the Russian mafias were able to build links with criminal organisations in other parts of the world
How can green or environmental crime be defined?
As crime against the environment. Much of it is linked to globalisation and the increasing interconnectedness of societies. Regardless of the division of the world into separate nation-states, the planet is a single eco-system, and threats to the eco-system are increasingly global rather than just local in nature, eg atmospheric pollution from industry in one country can turn to acid rain that falls in another, poisons its watercourses and destroys its forests. Similarly accidents in nuclear industry
Where do most threats to human well being and the ecosystem now come from?
They are now human-made rather than natural
What does Beck argue about today’s late modern society?
we can now provide adequate resources for all (at least in developed countries). However, the massive increase in productivity and technology that sustains it, have created new, ‘manufactured risks’-dangers that we have never faced before. Many of these risks involve harm to the environment and its consequences for humanity, such as global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from industry
How does Beck describe today’s society?
Like climate change, many of these risks are global rather than local in nature, leading Beck to describe late modern society as ‘global risk society’. An example of how the global nature of human-made risk can produce crime and disorder comes from Mozambique in 2010
What is the Mozambique example for ‘global risk society’?
In Russia, global warming triggered the hottest heatwave in a century, causing wildfires that destroyed parts of the country’s grain belt. This shortage led Russia to introduce export bans and pushed up the world price of grain. The knock-on effect in Mozambique, which is heavily dependant on food imports, was a 30% rise in the price of bread. This sparked extensive rioting and looting of food stores that left dozens dead. Mozambique’s own harvest had been hit by drought, possibly also the result of global warming. At the same time, international speculators were engaging in what the World Development Movement called ‘gambling on hunger in financial markets’ (Patel)
What are two types of criminology that answer the question of ‘What if the pollution that causes global warming or aid rain is perfectly legal and no crime has been committed?’?
Traditional criminology, and green criminology
What does traditional criminology argue?
Has not been concerned with such behaviour, since its subject matter defined by the criminal law, and law has been broken. The starting point for this approach is the national and international laws and regulations concerning the environment. For example, Situ and Emmons define environmental crime as ‘an unauthorised act or omission that violates the law’. Like other traditional approaches in criminology, it investigates the patterns and causes of law breaking
What is an advantage of traditional criminology?
It has a clearly defined subject matter-however, it is criticised for accepting official definitions of environmental problems and crimes, which are often shaped by powerful groups such as big business to serve their own interests
What is green criminology?
Takes a more radical approach. It starts from the notion of harm rather than criminal law
What does green criminology argue?
For example White argues that the proper subject of criminology is any action that harms the physical environment and/or the human and non-human animals within it, even if no law has been broken. In fact, many of the worst environmental harms are not illegal, and so the subject matter of green criminology is such wider than that of traditional criminology. For this reason, green criminology is a form of transgressive criminology-it oversteps the boundaries of traditional criminology to include new issues
What is green criminology also known as?
It also known as ‘zemiology’-the study of harms. Furthermore, different countries have different laws, so that the same harmful actions may be a crime in one country but not in another. Therefore, legal definitions cannot provide a consistent stand of harm, since they are the product of individual nation-states and their political processes. By moving away from a legal definition, therefore, green criminology can develop a global perspective on environmental harm
What is green criminology approach similar to?
This approach is like the Marxist view of ‘crimes of the powerful’. Marxists argue that the capitalist class are able to shape the law and define crime so that their own exploitative activities are not criminalised or, where they are, to ensure that enforcement is weak. Similarly, green criminologists argue that powerful interests, especially nation-states and transnational corporations, are able to define in their own interests what counts as unacceptable environmental harm
What does White talk about?
In general, nation-states and transnational corporations adopt what White calls an anthropocentric or human-centred view of environmental harm, which assumes that humans have a right to dominate nature for their own ends, and puts economic growth before the environment
What does White contrast the anthropocentric view with?
An ecocentric view that sees human and their environment as interdependent, so that environmental harm hurts humans also-this view sees both humans and the environment as liable to exploitation, particularly by global capitalism. In general, green criminology adopts the ecocentric view as the basis for judging environmental harm
What are types of green crimes?
From a green criminology perspective, South classifies green crimes into two types: Primary and Secondary
What are primary green crimes?
These are crimes that result directly from the destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources. South identifies four main types of primary crime: crimes of air pollution, crimes of deforestation, crimes of species decline and animal abuse, crimes of water pollution
