State crimes and human rights

Question 1

State crimes

Answer 1

Illegal or deviant acts perpetrated by a state or government. e.g. torture, genocide, war crimes.

Question 2

State crimes is one of the most serious crime due to two reasons

Answer 2

The scale of state crime - widespread victimisation.
The state is the source of the law - states role to define what a criminal is, and to manage CJS.

Question 3

Green and Ward

Answer 3

Argue that no state is immune from violating human rights to achieve it’s goals.

Question 4

Problems defining state crimes

Answer 4

Schwendinger and Schwendinger highlight that governments can deny citizens basic human rights, however when they do this they can change laws to prevent it being identified as a state crime.

Question 5

Chambliss

Answer 5

Sociologists should be critical of the role of the state in terms of its potential to commit crimes and for these crimes to go undetected.

Question 6

State crimes and the cultural of denial

Answer 6

Cohen examines the ways in which states and their officials deny or justify their crimes.

Question 7

Matza identified five neutralisation techniques that delinquents use to justify their deviant behaviour.

Answer 7

1. Denial of victim 2. Denial of injury 3. Denial of responsibility 4. Condemning the condemners 5. Appeal to higher loyalty.

Question 8

Problems researching state crimes

Answer 8

Cohen - Difficult to investigate the true extent of state crimes as the governments committing these acts have the power to deny or justify actions as well as the ability to reclassify them altogether making these acts ‘legal’.