Globalisation, green crime, human rights and state crime

• Globalisation - global criminal economy (Castells)


  • Worth over £1 trillion a year
  • Trafficking
  • Cyber-crime
  • Green crimes
  • Money laundering
  • Drugs trade
  • Relies on demand from the rich west and the desperation of the poor supplying countries
• Globalisation - risk consciousness

  • Risk is seen as global rather than tied to particular places
  • The increased movement of people has lead to anxieties among western countries to protect their borders
  • Caused by negative media coverage, like on immigration
• Globalisation - capitalism and crime (Taylor)


  • Globalisation has allowed corps to switch manufacturing to low-wage countries, producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty
  • The lack of jobs causes unemployed people to resort to crime
  • Allows the elite to move funds around the globe to avoid taxes
• Globalisation - patterns of criminal organisation (Hobbs and Dunningham)


  • Crime organisation is linked t0 economic changes brought about by globalisation
  • Individuals with contacts act as a 'hub' and create a network, composed of other individuals seeking opportunities
  • Contrasts hierarchical mafia style of the past
• Globalisation - glocal organisation (Hobbs and Dunningham)


  • Despite global networks, crime is still rooted in a local context
  • Individuals still need local contacts to find opportunities
  • Counter - their conclusion may not be generalisable to other criminal activity elsewhere
• Globalisation - McMafia (Glenny)


  • Organisations that emerged in Russia following the fall of communism
  • Purley economic organisations formed to pursue self-interest
  • New capitalist class turned to the mafia to protect their wealth during the uncertain period
  • Meant crime was interlinked with the establishment of the new Russian capitalist class in the world economy
• Green crime - global risk society (Beck)


  • Late modern society can now provide adequate resources for all
  • However, the massive increase in productivity and tech have created risks
  • These risks harm the entire globe, like global warming
• Green crime - traditional criminology

  • National laws and regulations concerning the environment
  • Advantage of this typography is its clear and defined subject matter
  • Counter - accepts official definitions of environmental crime, which are shaped by the elite to serve their own interests
• Green crime - green criminology

  • White - the proper subject of criminology is any action that harms the environment, even if no laws have been broken
  • Different countries have different laws, but this typography can be applied universally
  • Argue powerful groups manipulate laws for their own interests
• Green crime - primary green crime (South)


  • Crimes that result directly from the destruction and degradation of the Earth's resources
  • Air pollution - carbon emissions growing 2% a year
  • Deforestation - between 1960 and 1990, 1/5 of the worlds rainforests destroyed
  • Species decline or animal abuse - 46% mammals at risk
  • Water pollution - 25 million deaths a year to contamination
• Green crime - secondary green crime (South)


  • Crime that breaks laws set in place to protect the environment
  • Conflict with protestors - French secret service blew up a ship protesting against nuclear weapon testing, killing 1
  • Dumping hazardous waste - 28,500 rusting barrels of radioactive waste on seabed
  • Environmental discrimination - city planning that places minority communities closer to garbage dumps
• Green crime - green criminology criticisms

  • Hard to define the boundaries of its field of study clearly
  • Deciding on morals is a matter of values and cannot be established objectively
• State crimes - scale (Green and ward)


  • The state's enormous power gives it the potential to inflict harm on a huge scale
  • 262 million people murdered by governments during 20th century
• State crime - state as a source of law

  • Role is to define what is a criminal, uphold law and prosecute offenders
  • However, this power means the state can also conceal their own crimes
  • Undermines the system of justice and the public's faith in it
• State crime - typography (McLaughlin)


  • Political crimes
  • Crimes by security and police forces
  • Economic crimes
  • Social and cultural crimes
• State crime - corporate (Kramer and Michalowski)


  • State initiated - states direct or approve corporate crime, cost cutting at NASA led to killing of 7 astronauts
  • State facilitated - states fail to regulate and control corporate behaviour, making crime easier, state failed to inspect Deepwater Horizon oilrig that ended up killing 11 workers
• State crime - war crimes

  • Illegal wars - Kramer and Michalowski argue that to justify the USAs invasion of Iraq in 2003 as self-defence, they made the false claim that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction
  • Crime during war - Whyte says the US illegally changed the constitution so that the economy could be privatised and they could seize oil
• State crime - domestic law

  • State makes laws which allows them to carry out harmful acts
  • German Nazi state passed a law permitting it to compulsorily sterilise the disabled
  • Leads to inconsistencies, as an act my be legal on one side of a boarder and illegal on the other side
• State crime - social harms and zemiology (Hillyard)


  • Zemiology - the study of harms, whether or not they are against the law
  • This definition prevents the state from ruling themselves out of the court
  • Also prevents different states laws as it overlooks all laws
  • Counter - has no indication on who should be the moral judge
• State crime - labelling

  • Argues that whether an act is regarded as a crime depends on whether social audience defines it as such
  • State crime is socially constructed, and so what people regard as a state crime can vary over time and between cultures
  • Counter - no indication on who the relevant audience is, or that audience's definitions may be manipulated by ruling class ideology
• State crime - international law (Rothe and Mullins)


  • Define a state crime as any action by a state that violates international law or the states own domestic law
  • Doesn't rely on sociologists own perception of harm
  • Intentionally designed to deal with state crime, unlike most domestic laws
  • Counter - international law is a social construct and focuses on war crimes rather than state corruption
• State crime - human rights

  • Natural rights - the right to live, liberty and free speech
  • Civil rights - right to vote, privacy, fair trials and education
  • Schwendinger - state crime violates both
  • Risse - virtually all states care about their human rights image due to them being global social norms
  • Counter - Cohen says acts like economic exploitation is not self-evidently criminal, unlike torture which is clearly criminal
• State crime - the authoritarian personality (Adorno)


  • Willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question
  • During WW2, many Germans suffered from this due to socialisation
  • Arendt - people who carry out torture and genocide aren't psychopaths but instead normal, found that Nazi war criminal Eichmann wasn't even antisemitic
• State crime - crime of obedience 


  • Research shows that many people are willing to obey authority even when this involves harming others
  • Green and Ward - most torturers are re-socialised with exposure to propaganda in order for them to do what they do without any effects
  • Kelman and Hamilton's typography:
  • Authorisation - acts are approved by authority
  • Routinisation - crimes are turned into routine
  • Dehumanisation - enemy portrayed as sub-human
• State crime - modernity (Bauman)


  Explanations for how the Holocaust happened:

  • A division of labour - each person responsible for a small task, so no one person felt responsible for the atrocity
  • Bureaucratisation - normalising the killing as a job by making it repetitive
  • Instrumental rationality - simple goals put in place to make task easier to comprehend
  • Science and technology - railways and gas chambers made process easier and automated
• State crime - criticisms of modernity

  • Not all genocides were highly organised division of labour that allows participants to distance themselves from killing, for example the Rwanda genocide
  • Ignores the fact that propaganda made being Jewish not a social norm
• State crime - the culture of denial (Cohen)


  • Due to rise in awareness, states now have to make a greater effort to conceal or justify their human rights crimes
  • Spiral of state denial:
  • Stage 1 - state claims it didn't happen
  • Stage 2 - state label it as something else, like self defence
  • Stage 3 - state claim it was justified
• State crime - techniques of neutralisation (Sykes and Matza)


  • Denial of victim
  • Denial of injury
  • Denial of responsibility
  • Condemning the condemners
  • Appeal to higher loyalty