State Crimes + HR

Question 1

What are state crimes?

Answer 1

Illegal/ deviant acts perpetrated by a state/ G or committed by state agencies (police/ military)
includes crimes such as torture, war crimes, genocide, state sponsored terrorism

Question 2

What are problems with defining state crimes?

Answer 2

State has the power to define what is a crime

Has power to avoid defining its own acts as criminal

Question 3

Give 6 examples of state crimes

Answer 3

1. Torture + illegal treatment
2. Corruption
3. War crimes (Tony Balir, investigated for being war criminal - Chilcot report 2016)
4. Genocide (Auschwitz)
5. Assassination
6. State-sponsored terrorism

Question 4

What scale is state crime?

Answer 4

Power of state enables it to commit extremely large-scale crimes with widespread victimisation
Power means it is well placed to conceal its crime/ evade punishment for them

Question 5

What are the 4 techniques that Cohen argues the state uses to hide its crimes?

Answer 5

Builds on work of Matza (neutralisation techniques)

1. Denial of Vs (exaggerate, they’re terrorists)
2. Denial of injury (they started it, we’re the Vs)
3. Denial of responsibility (only obeying orders, used by Nazis in WWII)
4. Condemning the condemners
5. Appeal to higher loyalty (defending the free world)