human rights and state crimes

• Human rights are basic entitlements of all people to things like education, freedom of speech
• Human rights crimes violate peoples basic human rights eg. torture- everyone must undergo a fair trial
• state crimes are illegal activities carried out by or on behalf of the government which violate laws and human rights
• STATE CRIME PATTERNS

  global

  potential to affect many on a massive scale

  hard to prove

  even though all countries commit it, western countries blame others

  legally complicated
• MCLAUGHIN SAYS THERES 4 CATEGORIES OF STATE CRIME

  censorship

  crimes by security and police force - genocide, war crime, assassination

  economic crime - facilitated corporate crime

  social and cultural crime - institutional racism
• PROBLEMS DEFINING STATE CRIME

  state has the power to define actions not criminal and inadequate

  international law use to define state crime is inadequate as doesnt cover all crime

  'harm' definition to vague
• PROBLEMS DEFINING STATE CRIME

  difficult to study as the state decides whats crime or not so can go undetected and unreported - dark figure

  marxists - government can be secretive of their deviance to ensure its not classed criminal
• SOC EXPLANATION - crimes of obedience model

  kelman and hamilton - people who work for state trained to obey orders and commands through

  authorisation

  routinisation

  dehumanisation

  eg. holocaust
• SOC EXPLANATION - traditional marxism

  capitalist society underpins state crime - nation wants to be successful so commit illegal acts to further interest - not recorded in stats as police represent rc intrests or wouldnt arrest themself

  EG. britains involvement in torture of 9/11 suspected terrorists
• HOW STATE CONCEALS THEIR CRIME

  spiral of denial cohen - state denys wrongdoing of criminality in 3 ways

  outright deny wrongdoing

  claims its not what it looks like

  justify it

  eg. chinese detention centres for muslims
• HOW STATE CONCEALS THEIR CRIME

  cohen neutralisation theory - state dont always deny, they try to justify using neutralisation methods by:

  individuals deny responsibility eg. following orders

  deny victims by describing them as terrorists

  appeal to a higher cause

  use provides democratic state excuses for human right breaches to themself, those who carried out the crime and countries condeming