state crimes

• state crimes

  green + ward - 'illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies'. it is the most serious form of crime for two reasons

  1. the extreme scale of state crime
  2. the state is the source of law so it is most able to conceal its crimes

  mclaughlin - there are four types of state crime

  1. political crimes eg. watergate and partygate
  2. crimes by security and police forces eg. rwanda genocide
  3. economic crimes eg. challenger and grenfell
  4. social and cultural crimes eg. nazi germany
• rwanda genocide

  • there were 2 groups - hutus and tutsis - who were somewhat like social classes
  • the belgians 'ethnicised' them by issuing separate racial identity cards
  • gained independence in 1962 and the hutu majority gained power
  • civil war caused the government to fuel race hate propoganda against the tutis
  • 800000 tutis were killed and 1/3 of hutus are estimated to have taken part
• state-corporate crime

  kramer + michalowski - state crimes are often committed in conjunction with corporations. this can be ~

  • state-initiated- states initiate, direct or approve corporate crime
  • challenger disaster - negligent and cost-cutting behaviour led to the explosion of the challenger rocket that killed 12 astronauts
  • state facilitated - states fail to regulate corporate activity which makes committing crime easier
  • deepwater horizon oil rig - the bp rig exploded and killed 11 workers, causing the largest accidental oil spill in history
• illegal wars

  form of war-related crime - under international law war can only be declared by the un security council

  • this may mean that un wars on terror like in afghanistan and iraq are illegal
  • kramer + michalowski - to justify the invasion of iraq as self-defence the usa and uk falsely claimed the iraquis possessed weapons of mass destruction
• crimes committed during war

  eg. whyte - the usa's neoliberal colonisation of iraq when the constitution was illegally changed to allow the economy to be privitised

  • abu ghraib - us enquiry found numerous cases of 'sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses'
  • kramer - the terror bombing of of civilians has become normalised since world war two
• domestic law definition

  chambliss - state crime is 'acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representatives of the state'

  • using the state's domestic law is inadequate because it ignores the fact that states have the power to define law to avoid criminalising themselves
  • they can also make laws allowing the state to carry out harmful acts eg. nazi germany
  • also leads to inconsistencies as different states have different laws
• social harms and zeminologydefinition

  michalowski - extends definitions of state crime to 'legally permissible acts whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts' in terms of the harm caused

  • hillyard - the study of crime should be replaced with zeminology to study harm whether it is legal or not eg. state-facilitated poverty
  • this prevents states from ruling themselves 'out of court'
  • criticisms
  • what level of harm has to occur before it is defined as a crime?
  • who decides what counts as harm?
• labelling and societal reactiondefinition

  recognises that state crime is socially constructed and so what is viewed as state crime can change over time and between groups, which prevents sociologists imposing definitions

  • criticisms
  • even vaguer than social harms eg. kauzlarich - anti-iraq war protesters were reluctant to define the actions as criminal despite viewing it as harmful
  • unclear who is the audience who decides when a state crime has been committed
  • ignores the fact that audiences' views may be warped by the ideology of the ruling class
• international lawdefinition

  laws created through treaties like geneva and hague conventions on war crimes can be used to define state crime

  • rothe + mullins - a state crime is any action by or on behalf of a state that violates international law or the state's own domestic law
  • doesn't depend on sociologists' personal definitions of harm
  • criticisms
  • strand + truman - international law is socially constructed similarly to domestic law
  • international law focuses more on war crimes and ignores other crimes like corruption
• human rightsdefinition

  schwendinger + schwendinger - state crime is a violation of people's basic human rights by the state or its agents, an example of transgressive criminology

  • risse - virtually all states care about their human rights image, which makes them susceptible to shaming from their population
  • the definition of crime is inevitably political so the sociologists' role should defend people's human rights
  • criticisms
  • cohen - some acts aren't self-evidently criminal even if we find them morally unacceptable
  • green + ward - there are some disagreements about what counts as a human right
• authoritarian personality explanation


  adorno - some people hold an authoritarian personality which makes them particularly willing to follow orders from the state without question

  • at the time of the second world war many germans had authoritarian personalities due to disciplinarian socialisation
  • similar to the thought that people who carry out torture must be psychopaths
  • however there is little psychological difference between 'normal' people and those who take part in atrocities
  • arendt - eichmann was relatively normal and not even particularly anti-semitic
• crimes of obedience explanation

  state crimes are crimes of conformity as they require obedience to a higher authority, so sociologists study the way people are socialised into this mentality

  • research eg. milgram shows that people are willing to obey orders even if it means harming people
  • green + ward - in order to overcome norms against cruelty people need to be re-socialised through propoganda
  • states create 'enclaves of barbarism' so the acts can be separated from daily life
• crimes of obedience - conditions

  kelman + hamilton - studied the my lai massacre and found three general features that produce crimes of obedience

  • authorisation - when acts are approved by authority we are able to replace moral duties with the duty to obey
  • routinisation - when a crime is committed there is pressure to turn that act into a routine that allows it to be performed with detachment
  • dehumanisation - when the enemy is portrayed as sub-human normal principles of morality don't apply
• modernity explanation

  bauman - features of modernity allowed the holocaust to take place

  • a division of labour - each person was responsible for a small task so no-one felt personally responsible
  • bureaucratisation - normalised the killing by making it a routine job, while allowing victims to be dehumanised as units
  • instrumental rationality - rational and efficient methods are used to achieve a goal
  • science and technology - eg. railways transporting jews and gas chambers

  the holocaust was a result of modern society, not the breakdown of it
• evaluation of the modernity explanation

  • not all genocides occur through such organised methods that allow dissociation and detachment eg. the rwanda genocide was carried out directly by groups of hutus
  • ideological factors are also important - nazi ideology played a key role in the holocaust that the explanation ignores
• the culture of denial

  cohen - states now have to make a greater effort to conceal or justify their crimes as the human rights movement has had a growing effect over the last few decades (alvarez). democratic states have to legitimise their actions, which occurs in a three-step process

  1. it didn't happen - the state claims the atrocity didn't occur, easily disproved by activists
  2. if it did happen, it is something else - the state says it was self-defence not murder
  3. even if it is what you say it is, it was justified - eg. to fight the war on terror or defend against some vague threat
• techniques of neutralisation

  cohen - identifies ways that the state uses neutralisation techniques to justify human rights violations

  • denial of victim - vilifying the victim to suggest they were the actual villain in the situation
  • denial of injury - downplaying the harm done to the victim
  • denial of responsibility - the suggestion that people were obeying orders from other authority figures and hold no blame
  • condemning the condemners - suggesting they are only being blamed because of another systemic issue
  • appeal to higher loyalty - claim to be serving a higher cause