state crime T12 Flashcards
why is state crime the most serious form of crime?
- the scale of state crime
- the state is the source of law
the state is the source of law
- able to avoid defining its own harmful actions as criminal
- state control CJS so can persecute enemies
scale of state crime
- large-scale widespread victimisation
- can conceal crimes / escape punishment
- national sovereignty makes it difficult for organisations to intervene
McLaughlin
4 types of state crime
- political (corruption & censorship)
- crime by security and police force (genocide, torture)
- economic crime (h&s violation)
- social and cultural (institutional racism)
definitions of state crime
- domestic vs international law
- social harms and zemiology
- human rights and state crime
- labelling and societal reaction
example of state concealing crime
USA & UK military torture in Iraq - Guantanamo Bay
example of state avoiding defining harmful actions as criminal
Nazi Germany created laws permitting persecution of Jews and sterilising disabled people against will
problem with domestic law v international law
- ignores states creating laws to avoid criminalising own actions (Nazi Germany)
- acts may be legal in one place and not another
Rothe & Mullins
state crimes should be defined as any law violating international law/treaties = globally agreed definition
evaluation of Rothe & Mullins
international law socially constructed involving use of power so powerful nations may use influence to overturn international bans (Japan bribed other nations to vote against whaling ban)
Zemiology
crime should be replaced with the ‘study of harms’
Michalowski
much harms done by the state are not illegal but legally permissible despite causing harm
Hillyard
should replace study of crime with zemiology (e.g. state-facilitated poverty has widespread consequences but not illegal)
evaluation of zemiology
definition too vague - who decides what counts as harm?
Schwendinger
crime should be defined as breaking human rights not law (inflicting racism, sexism etc deny basic rights)
Risse
supports human rights definition as most states care about human rights image as it’s a global norm = by breaking would lead to shame and consequence
Cohen’s evaluation of Schwendinger
violations like genocide & torture are clear crimes but economic exploitation not evidently criminal so there is a limited agreement on what counts as human rights (e.g. should freedom from poverty be a human right?)
examples of state crime
- Guantanamo Bay
- Nazi Germany
- Khmer Rouge
- Argentina military takeover
Argentina military takeover
- 30,000 disappearances
- babies given to those who supported regime
- 1976-83
Khmer Rouge - Cambodia
- communist regime
- mass genocide
- population dropped by 1/3
theories of state crime
- crimes of obedience
- culture of denial
- modernity
how are state crimes crimes of obedience?
they require obedience to higher authority. people are willing to obey authority even when it involves harming g others due to being socialised into it
Green & Ward
to overcome norms against the use pf cruelty, individuals need to be re-socialised, trained and exposed to propaganda about ‘the enemy’
Kelman & Hamilton
- studied My Lai massacre in Vietnam where American troops killed 400 civilians
- explained crime of obedience in terms of
1) authorisation
2) routinisation
3) dehumanisation
authorisation
following orders of those in authority, moral principles are replaced by duty to obey
routinisation
once the act is committed it is seen as a routine that one can be detached from
dehumanisation
enemies re presented as sub-human so normal principles of morality dent apply
Bauman
Holocaust was a product of modernity which was made possible by
- division of labour
- bureaucratisation
- instrumental rationality
- science and technology
division of labour
each person was responsible for a small task so no one felt personally responsible
Bureaucratisation
enabled Nazis to dehumanise victims and turn to mass murder into a routine administrative task
instrumental rationality
efficient methods used to achieve a goal
science and technology
e.g railways transporting victims to camps, industrially produced gas, weaponry to fight war
evaluation of modernity
- not all genocides occur through highly organised division of labour that allows pps to distance themselves e.g. Rwandan genocide carried out my large groups
- ignores ideological factors that caused Holocaust - racist ideology supplied by decades of propaganda
Alvarez
recent years have seen growing impact of international human rights movement which brings pressure on states = led to culture of denial
Cohen - culture of denial
states have to go to greater efforts to conceal and legitimise human rights crime
Cohens 3 stage spiral of state denial (democratic states)
1) ‘it didn’t happen’ e.g. states claim no massacre but human rights organisations, victims & media show it did
2) claim it’s not what it looks like
3) justify action to protect nation e.g. fight ‘war on terror’
Cohen’s techniques of neutralisation (justify abuses)
- denial of victim
- denial of injury
- denial of responsibility
- condemning the condemners
- appeal to higher loyalty
denial of victim
they exaggerate, they are terrorists, they are used to violence etc
denial of injury
they started it, we are the victims
denial of responsibility
only obeying orders, doing my duty
Cohen’s view on war on terror
USA had to publicly justify its interrogation practices and claimed they were not torture as they were merely stress induced and not physically/psychologically damaging.
attempt to normalise torture
evaluation of Cohen
draws attention to similarity between crimes of powerful & powerless. This is because govs use the same types f justifications for crime as w/c juveniles do. don’t deny the event happened but seek to impose a different construction of the event from what actually happened.
