State crime Flashcards
1
Q
What are state crimes?
A
- Green and Ward (2004) describe them as illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by or with the complicity of state agencies to further state policies
- generally taken to include offences like torture, illegal treatment/punishment/imprisonment, genocide, corruption, assassinations, state-sponsored terrorism and human rights violations
2
Q
Problems with defining state crime
A
- the state is the source of law and defines what a crime is (eg in WW2 Germany the persecution of jews was legal)
- states have the ability to disguise, hide and justify offences by defining them as something else, avoiding international laws like the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the Conventions against Torture and Genocide
3
Q
A transgressive approach: state crime as the violation of human rights
A
- sociologists have adapted a more transgressive approach due to problems defining state crime
- Schwendinger and Schwendinger (1975) and Green and Ward (2012) - state crimes should be considered as violations of human rights
- Green and Ward define state crime as “state organisational deviance involving the violation of human rights”
- distinguishing between actions of the state and actions of individuals who work for the state, such as soldiers or police
- state crimes are committed on behalf of, or with the complicity of state agencies, and are implementing official or unofficial state policy
4
Q
What are human rights?
A
- those that suggest that everyone is entitled to the same fair and just treatment
- UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 has established legal framework for defining and enforcing universal human rights
- Green and Ward - human rights have become global social norms
- O’Byrne (2012) - states are increasing assessed by the extent to which they preserve human rights
- Schwendinger and Schwendinger and Green and Ward - human rights involve a wider package of basic social and economic rights such as liberty, security and well-being
- human rights dimension places the study of state crime in a wider context of social harm rather than simply law-breaking
5
Q
Examples of state crime: Torture and illegal treatment or punishment of citezens
A
- systematic torture, disappearances and mass murder of thousands of polictal opponents to the Gaddafi regime in Libya (overthrown in 2011)
- the Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia 1975-9 in which 1.5-3 million people (1/5 of the population) died through forced labour, malnutrition, poor medical care, executions etc
- in the 1970s the UK was found guilty of using white noise to torture IRA suspects
- by 2012 the UK Ministry of Defence had paid out £14 mil in compensation to hundreds of Iraqis illegally detianed and tortured during 2003 invasion of Iraq
- in the US, Guantanemo Bay naval base is still open in Cuba, in which some prisoners are tortured and have not been charged with an offence or given a trial
- in 2014, US Senate report found the CIA frequently used illegal torture to interrogate suspects in secret prisons across the world following the 11 September 2001 terror attacks
6
Q
Examples of state crime: Corruption
A
- organised plunder of national resources by a ruling elite
- former Egyptian dictator Mubarak, overthrown in 2011, was allegedly worth around $70 bil and embezzled from state coffers
7
Q
Examples of state crime: Assassination or ‘targeted killing’
A
- eg Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, Palestinian Hamas commander, killed in a hotel in Dubai in 2010
- Russia largely believed to be behind 2006 murder by radiation poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London
8
Q
Examples of state crime: War Crimes
A
- involve illegal acts committed during wars like murder, ill-treatment torture or enslavement of civilians or prisoners of war
- Israel repeatedly condemned for targeting civilian populations in conflict with Palestine
- former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic was brought to trial for war crimes, including the forced deportation and murder of thousands of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and of non-Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia in 1998-9
9
Q
Examples of state crime: Genocide
A
- the attempted elimination by mass murder of people belonging to a particular ethnic, national or religious group
- eg Hitler’s Nazi regime murdered 6 million Jews 1933-35 in the Holocaust
- in Sudan’s Darfur region, an estimated 300,000 died 2003-9 with millions forced into refugee camps
- Rwanda genocide of 1994 - an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 of people from the Tutsi minority were killed by the majority Hutu people over 100 days
10
Q
Examples of state crime: State-sponsored terrorism
A
- involves the state carrying out or supporting terrorist acts
- Iran has been accused of backing Shia militias in Iraq
- US has a long history of supporting rebel groups in regimes they consider unfriendly, especially in Central and South America
- 2012 De Silva report into the 1989 murder of a Belfast lawyer concluded that British state agencies were involved in carrying out serious violations of human rights, including murder, in what David Cameron (PM at the time) called ‘shocking levels of state collusion’ between army, police and terrorists
11
Q
Explanations for state crimes: Green and Ward (2012)
A
identify 2 main explanations for state crime:
- integrated theory
- the crimes of obedience model
12
Q
Explanations for state crimes: integrated theory
A
- suggests state crimes arises from similar circumstances as other crimes
- involves integrating the 3 elements of offenders’ motivations, opportunities to commit crime and failure of control, and how these interact
13
Q
Explanations for state crimes: the crimes of obedience model, developed by Kelman and Hamilton (1989)
A
- emphasises not rule-breaking but conformity to rules
- suggest violent states encourage obedience by those who actually carry out human rights abuses, even if they personally see them as wrong, in 3 main ways
1 - authorisation - making it clear to individuals that they are acting in accordance with state policy, with state authority and support
2 - dehumanisation - promotion of a monolithic (single and inflexible) cultural identity, based in marginalisation of minorities to encourage the view of them as sub-human groups to whom normal rules do not apply
3- routinisation - organising the actions so that they become part of regular routine and can be performed in a detached way - Swann (2001) - violent states create ‘enclaves of barbarism’, places or situations in which state violence is encouraged and rewarded - Bauman (1989) applies these 3 processes to the Holocaust
14
Q
Techniques of neutralisation
A
- Cohen (2001) applies Sykes and Matza’s (1975) concept of techniques of neutralisation to explain how states can deny human rights breaches
- they try to neutralise their crimes by re-labelling them as something else or excusing them as regrettable but justifiable - eg torture may be justified against terrorists because the terrorists show no regard for human life
- this techniques allow states to justify and excuse their actions to themselves, those who carry out the acts and to other countries and the rest of the world which may seek to condemn them
15
Q
Problems of researching state crimes
A
- Cohen - difficult to identify extent of state crime because governments adopt strategies of denial and techniques of neutralisation
- state crimes are committed by the powerful, who can hide their actions
- the ‘dark figure’ of state crime is likely higher than estimated
- researchers are reliant on secondary data, which tends focus on crimes committed by developing nations
- Tombs and White (2003) - researchers are likely to face strong official resistance, and states can hinder or dissuade them from research (eg through threats or denying access, or even death or imprisonment under dictator regimes)
- Green and Ward (2012) - research can be difficult, harrowing and dangerous, and researchers may be prosecuted
