State crimes

Question 1

What is a state crime

Answer 1

Chambliss:

Crime committed by state officials as part of their state job

Question 2

What is the transgressive approach + Sociologist

Answer 2

Green and Ward:

state organisational deviance involves the violation of human rights

Question 3

What are human rights

Answer 3

• The idea that everyone is entitled to fair and just treatment
• UN created universal declaration of human rights

Question 4

Name the 4 different types of state crime

Answer 4

1. Genocide
2. War crimes
3. Illegal treatment of citizens
4. State corporate crime

Question 5

who introduced the crime of deviance model

Answer 5

Kelman and Hamilton:

• Place emphasis of conformity to the rules
  1. Authorisation = Made clear to people that they’re acting on the state authority
  2. Dehumanisation = Taking away human equalities => excluded from society
  3. Routinization = actions of crime become part of a routine
  e. g. Guantanamo Bay detention camp

Question 6

Who talks about the spiral of state denial

Answer 6

Cohen:

• Today society = we expect states to follow human rights = must justify any violations
  1. states may say it didn’t happen
  2. Say it’s something else
  3. It may be true but it was justified

Question 7

What else does Cohen talk about

Answer 7

Techniques of neutralisation:

• Process of re labelling a crime to make it less of an offence
  1. Denial of victim - exaggeration
  2. Denial of injury - shift the blame
  3. Denial of responsibility
  4. condemning the condemner
  5. Appeal to higher loyalty

Question 8

what do all the neutralisation techniques allow

Answer 8

The reconstruction of an event

Question 9

Who gives the contextual example of the holocaust

Answer 9

Bauman:

1. Division of labour = people responsible for 1 job = unaware of the scale of violence
2. Bureaucratisation = working men had to follow routines and rules
3. Instrumental rationality = achieving a goal rationally (murder)
4. Science and tech = railway to conc camps and gas chambers

Question 10

What are the problems with researching state crimes

Answer 10

Cohen:
- government adopt strategies of denial = they have agencies at their disposal so they can cover up criminal activities

Tombs & Whyte:
States can use their power to prevent sociologists from doing research in dictatorship, torture, imprisonment or death