State Crimes - Crime Flashcards
What does Chambliss argue?
That sociologist should investigate ‘state organised crime’ as well as crimes of capitalism
What is the definition of state crime?
Illegal or devant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies (pace, armed forces + secret service)
What is genocide?
Mass murder of people from a particular ethnic, racial, religious or national group
Examples: Concentrations camps, Rwanda
What are violations of human rights?
These include natural rights such as rights to life, liberty and free speech, and civil rights such as the right to vote, to privacy, to a fair trial or to eduction
Examples: Segregation of ethnicity in Africa, no right to protest in Brazil
What are war crimes?
Including murder, ill treatment, torture or enslavement of civili prisoners of war
Examples: Syria - using civilians for target practice
What is torture and illegal treatment?
Often carried out by police forces against the citizens of the area
Example: water boarding in the USA
What are recent examples of state crimes?
Rio Olympics = people forced out of their houses to make way for developments
- China + North Korea
What is the scale of state crime?
The power of the state enables it to commit extremely large-scale crimes with widespread victimisation. The states monopoly of violence gives it the potential to inflict massive harm, while is power means it is well place to conceal its crimes or evade punishment
How is the state the source of law?
It is the state role to define what is criminal, and to manage the CJS and prosecute offenders.
Its power to make the law also means that it can avoid defining its own harmful actions as criminal
What does Cohen examine?
The ways in which states and their officials deny or justify their crimes - draws upon the work of Matza
What are Cohen’s 5 techniques of neutralisation?
1) Denial of victim - exaggerate; they are terrorists, used to violence
2) Denial of injury - they started it; we’re the real victims
3) Denial of responsibility - I was only obeying orders, doing my duty
4) Condemning the condemners - the whole world is picking on us, its worse somewhere else e.g. hostility to Islam
5) Appeal to higher loyalty - self-reighteous justification, the nation, revolution, defence of the free world etc