Topic 8-Globalisation, state crime and green crime Flashcards
give 4 examples of global crime
- international illegal drug trade
- human trafficking
- money laundering
- cybercrimes
what is the global criminal economy
- it is the idea that societies become more interconnected, crime increases across national borders. There are new opportunities for crime
- it needs a demand side and supply side
what does castells say the global criminal economy is worth?
- 1 trillion pounds per annum
what are 5 forms of crime that contributes to the global criminal economy?
- trafficking weapons, humans, animals
- smuggling illegal immigrants
- green crimes
- international terroism
- drug trade
what 2 things does the global criminal economy need to function?
- demand from the rich west
- supply from the resr of the world
how is supply of illegal items linked to globalisation?
country specific example
- example in Columbia 20% of the population is dependent on the cocaine trade for their livelihood
- drug cultivation is an attractive option that requires little investment in technology and commands high prices compared with traditional crops
- Thus the rich west demands products e.g. drugs, sex workers and the poor third world countries supply these services.
what is global risk consciousness and how has it led to discrimination?
- Globalisation has bought with it an increase in insecurities surrounding the movement of people
- This has given rise to anxieties among populations in Western countries about the risks of crime and disorder and the need to protect their borders.
- This in turn had led to increasing border patrols to protect countries from this perceived threat.
- Much of our knowledge about risks comes from the media, which often give an exaggerated view of the dangers we face; leading to ‘moral panics’ about terrorists and ‘scroungers’, ‘flooding’ the country.
- This has led to hate crimes against minorities in several European countries including the UK.
what does taylor suggest about the effect of globalisation?
- globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime.
- Globalisation has created greater inequality and rising crime.
what do left realist argue about globalisation and poor people committing crime?
- the poor in developed countries experience more relative deprivation because of living in a media saturated society now.
- If they experience low pay or unemployment, they turn to crime to gain the products or lifestyle that everyone else has.
- This is because of an increasingly materialistic culture promoted by global capitalist society led by the media
how had globalisation enabled crime in a capitalist society?
- It has facilitated crimes for big companies in a capitalist society by allowing transnational corporations to switch manufacturing to low wage countries, producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty.
- These countries have difficulty controlling their own economies
what is an evaluation about taylor’s findings?
- Taylor is good for linking global trends to changes in the patterns of crime but it doesn’t explain why some people don’t turn to crime.
what did hobbs and dunningham say about crime organisation and globalisation?
- the way crime is organized is linked to economic changes brought by globalization.
- it involves individuals with contacts acting as a ’hub’ around which a loose knit network forms, composed of other individuals seeking opportunities and often linking legitimate and illegitimate activities.
- Hobbs and Dunningham argue that this contrasts with the large scale, hierarchical ‘Mafia’-style criminal organisations of the past, such as that are headed by the Kray brothers in the East End of London.
what is a glocal organisation?
- Crime is still locally based but with global connections.
- Hobbs and Dunningham argue that changes associated with globalisation have led to changes in patterns of crime
- e.g. the shift from the old rigidly hierarchical gang structure to loose networks of flexible, opportunistic, entrepreneurial criminals.
- However, it is not clear that such patterns are new, nor that the older structures have disappeared.
what do green and ward define state crime as?
‘illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies’.
what are the 2 reasons why state crime is the most serious form of crime?
The scale of state crime.
The state is the source of law
explain the scale of state crime
- The state’s enormous power gives it the potential to inflict harm on a huge scale.
- Green and Ward cite a figure of 262 million people murdered by governments during the 20th century.
explain that the state is the source of law
- It is the state’s role to define what is criminal, uphold the law and prosecute offenders.
- However its power means that it can conceal its crimes, evade punishments for them, and even avoid defining its own actions as criminal in the first place.
what are the 4 categories of state crime and who identified them?
- mclaughlin
- Political crimes (e.g. corruption and censorship).
- Crimes by security and police forces (e.g. genocide, torture and disappearances of dissidents).
- Economic crimes (e.g. official violations of health and safety laws).
- Social and cultural crimes (e.g. institutional racism).
list all the different sociological definitions that state crime has
5 definitions
- domestic law
- social harms and zemiology
- labelling and societal reaction
- international law
- human rights
explain the definition of domestic law
states have the power to make laws and so they can avoid criminalizing their own actions (e.g. German Nazi state).
* This definition also leads to inconsistencies e.g. the same act may be illegal on one side of a border but legal on the other.
explain the definition of social harms and zemiology
- This recognizes that much of the harm done by states is not against the law.
- Hillyard et al argue that we should take a much wider view of state wrongdoing - we should replace the study of crimes with ‘zemiology’ – the study of harms, whether or not they are against the law.
- E.g. these harms would include state facilitated poverty.
- However critics argue that a ‘harms definition’ is potentially very vague e.g. who decides what counts as harm? What level of harm must occur before an act is defined as a crime?
explain the definition of labelling and societal reaction
- Labelling theory argues that whether an act constitutes a crime depends on whether the social audience for that act defines it as a crime.
- The audience may witness the act either directly or indirectly e.g. through media reports.
- This definition recognizes that state crime is socially constructed and so what people regard as a state crime can vary over time and between cultures or groups.
- Also, it ignores the fact audiences’ definitions may be manipulated by ruling class ideology e.g. the media may persuade the public to see a war as legitimate rather than criminal.
explain the definition of international law
- Rothe and Mullins define a state crime as any action by or on behalf of a state that violates international law and or a state’s own domestic law.
- The advantage of this is that it does not depend on the sociologist’s own personal definitions of harm or who the relevant social audience is.
- Instead it uses globally agreed definitions of state crime.
- Also, international law focuses largely on war crimes and crimes against humanity, rather than other state crimes such as corruption.
explain the definition of human rights and a criticism for this definition
- it includes natural rights and civil rights
- Schwendinger argues we should define crime in terms of violation of basic human rights, rather than the breaking of legal rules.
- States that practice racism, sexism or economic exploitation are committing crimes because they are denying people their basic rights.
- Cohen criticizes Schwendinger’s view. While gross violations of human rights, such as torture, are clearly crimes, other acts, such as economic exploitation are not self-evidently criminal, even if we find them morally unacceptable. There are also disagreements about what counts as a human right.
what is an authoritarian personality?
and an example this
- Adorno et al identify an ‘authoritarian personality’ that includes a willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question.
- They argue that at the time of the Second World War, many Germans had authoritarian personality types due to the punitive, disciplinarian socialization patterns that were common at the time.
between them and ‘normal’ people. - Such as Arendt’s study of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann showed him to be relatively normal and not even particularly anti-Semitic.
what is a crime of obedience?
- crime committed as people have conformed to a higher authority
what are the 3 features that produce crimes of obedience?
- Authorisation – when acts are ordered or approved by those in authority, normal moral principles are replaced by the duty to obey.
- Routinisation – once the crime has been committed, there is strong pressure to turn the act into routine which individuals can perform in a detached manner.
- Dehumanisation – when the enemy is portrayed as sub human rather than human and described as animal monsters; the usual principles of morality do not apply.
what are the 4 key features of a modern society that made the holocaust possible?
- A division of labour – each person was responsible for just one small task, so no one felt personally responsible for the atrocity.
- Bureaucratization – normalized the killing by making it a repetitive, rule governed and routine ‘job’. Victims were dehumanized as mere ‘units’.
- Instrumental rationality – rational, efficient methods are used to achieve a goal. In modern business, the goal is profit; in the holocaust, it was murder.
- Science and technology – from the railways transporting victims to the death camps, to the industrially produced gas used to kill them.
what was the holocaust according to bauman
the Holocaust was the result not of a breakdown of civilization, but of the very existence of modern rational-bureaucratic civilization.
what are 3 evaluations of crimes of obedience
Not all genocides occur through a highly organized division of labour that allows participants to distance themselves from the killing. For example, the Rwandan genocide was carried out directly by large marauding groups.
Ideological factors are also important. Nazi ideology stressed a single, monolithic German racial identity that excluded minorities such as Jews, Gypsies and Slaves, who were defined as inferior or even sub human. This meant they did not need to be treated according to normal standards of morality.
Thus while the modern, rational division of labour may have supplied the means for the Holocaust, it was racist ideology that supplied the motivation to carry it out. A decade of anti-Semitic propaganda preceded the mass murder of the Jews and helped to create many willing participants and many more sympathetic bystanders.
what does cohen argue about the culture of denial
- Cohen argues state crimes now have to make a greater effort to conceal or justify their human rights crimes, or to re-label them as not crimes.
- He argues that while dictatorships generally simply deny committing human right abuses, democratic states have to legitimate their actions in more complex ways.
- Their justifications follow a ‘3 stage spiral of state denial’.
what are the 3 stages of the spiral of state denial?
Stage 1: ‘it didn’t happen’ – e.g. the state claims there was no massacre. But then victims and the media show it did happen such as providing photographic evidence.
Stage 2: ‘if it did happen, “it” is something else’. It’s not what it looks like – self-defense or collateral damage.
Stage 3: Even if it is what you say it is, it’s justified e.g. ‘to protect national security’ or ‘fight the war on terror’.
what are 5 the neutralisation techniques that delinquents use to justify their deviant behaviour?
Denial of victim – they exaggerate, they are terrorists, they are used to violence, look what they do to each other.
Denial of injury – they started it, we are the real victims, not them.
Denial of responsibility – I was only obeying orders, doing my duty.
Condemning the condemners – the whole world is picking on us, it’s worse elsewhere.
Appeal to higher loyalty – self-righteous justification – appeal to the higher cause such as national security.
what is green crime?
can be defined as crimes against the environment
what is an example of the whole world being affected by a single threat?
- much of Sweden’s pine forests have been ravaged by acid rain created because of pollution created in England and Wales
explain how we are in a global risk society environmentally
- Most threats to human well-being and the ecosystem today are human-made rather than natural.
- Increased productivity and technology have created new “manufacturing risks,” such as environmental damage and global warming.
- These risks are global in nature, leading Beck to describe modern society as a “Global Risk Society.”
what is an example of how global risk society can produce crime
- mozambique 2010
- A severe heatwave in Russia, triggered by global warming, caused devastating wildfires that destroyed parts of the country’s grain belt, leading to grain shortages and export bans.
- The global grain shortage led to a 30% increase in bread prices in Mozambique, sparking widespread riots and looting of food stores, resulting in at least a dozen deaths.
- Mozambique’s own harvest had suffered due to drought, possibly also caused by global warming, worsening the country’s food crisis.
what are the 2 criminology perspectives to have on green crime?
- traditional criminology
- green crimonology
what is the traditional criminology perspective on green crime and an evaluation
- Situ and Emmons argued environmental crime is recognised as ‘an unauthorised act or omission that violates the law’.
- Like other traditional approaches in criminology it investigates the patterns and causes of law breaking.
- The advantages of this approach are that it has a clearly defined subject matter.
- EVAL: However, it can be criticised for accepting official definitions of environmental problems and crimes, which are often shaped by powerful groups such as big business to serve their own interests.
what is the green criminology perspective onn green crime?
- it starts from the notion of harm rather than criminal law.
- For example, White argues any action that harms the physical environment or human/non-human animals within it, should be criminal, even if no laws have been broken.
what is a weakness of the green criminology viewpoint?
- different countries have different laws, so that the same harmful action may be a crime in one country and not in another.
- Thus, legal definitions cannot provide a consistent standard of harm, since they are the product of individual nation states and their political processes.
what are the 2 views of harm?
anthropocentric
ecocentric
what is the anthropocentric view of environmental harm?
- view assumes that humans have a right to dominate nature for their own ends and puts economic growth before the environment.
- For example, Transnational corporations like McDonalds adopt an anthropocentric view of environmental harm.
- This means that humans have the right to dominate nature for their own ends.
- Economic growth comes before the environment.
what is the ecocentric view of harm?
- sees humans and their environment as interdependent, so that environmental harm hurts humans too.
- This view sees both humans and the environment as liable to exploitation, particularly by global capitalism
what two types does nigel south classify evnironmental crime into
primary
secondary
name 4 types of primary crime
- air pollution
- deforestation
- species decline and animal rights
- water pollution
what are secondary environmental crimes?
- crimes that grow out of the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters.
- For example, governments often break their own regulations and cause environmental harms
what are the 2 examples of secondary crimes?
- state violence against oppositional groups
- hazardous waste and organised crime
what is an example of state violence against oppositional groups
- For example in 1985 the French secret police blew up a Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand, killing one member of the crew.
- The ship was there in an attempt to prevent green crime, namely French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.
what is an example of hazardous waste and organised crime?
- Disposal of toxic waste from the chemical, nuclear and other industries is highly profitable. Because of the high costs of safe and legal disposal, businesses may seek to dispose of such waste illegally
- Third World countries can dispose of it at a fraction of the cost, $3 a ton. Illegal waste disposal illustrates the problems of law enforcement in a globalised world
