State Crime

• > Green and Ward define state crime as illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies
• > McLaughlin identifies four types of state crime:

  > political crimes - corruption and censorship (China censorship)

  > crimes by security and police forces - genocide and torture (My Lai massacre)

  > economic crimes - official violations of health and safety laws (Grenfell tower)

  > social and cultural crimes - institutional racism (72/195 nation states still criminalise homosexuality)
• > State crime can be seen as one of the most serious forms of crime for two reasons:

  > the scale of state crime

  > the state is the source of law
• The Scale of State Crime:

  > the power of the state enables it to commit extremely large-scale crimes and widespread victimisation e.g. genocide and war crimes

  > Weber - the state have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in the enforcement of its order, which gives it the potential to inflict massive harm, then conceal these crimes or evade punishment

  > although media attention is often on state crimes committed by third world dictatorships, democratic states (e.g. UK and USA) have also been guilty of crimes e.g. military use of torture in Iraq
• The State is the Source of Law:

  > it is the state's role to define what is criminal, manage the criminal justice system and prosecute offenders - state crime undermines the system of justice, and its power means it can avoid defining its own actions as criminal

  > e.g. Nazi Germany - state created laws permitting it to sterilise disabled people against their will

  > state control of the CJS means it can persecute its enemies
• Explaining State Crime:

  > human rights

  > the culture of denial

  > neutralisation theory

  > crimes of obedience

  > crime of modernity
• Explaining State Crime - Human Rights:

  > Schwendinger and Schwendinger - we should define crime in terms of the violation of basic human rights, meaning states that deny individuals' human rights must be regarded as criminal (states that practice imperialism, racism, sexism or homophobia)

  > e.g. the Nazi state attacked the human rights of Jewish people, and other groups, legally by passing laws that persecuted them

  > if we accept a legal definition, we risk becoming subservient to the state that makes the law
• Explaining State Crime - The Culture of Denial:

  > Cohen - examines the way in which states conceal and legitimate their human rights crimes

  > dictatorships will simply deny committing human rights abuses

  > democracies will follow a three stage 'spiral of denial':

  1. the state claims the abuse did not happen
  2. when proof emerges that it did happen, they claim it is 'not what it looks like' (not an abuse)
  3. when evidence emerges that it was an abuse, they claim it is justified e.g. necessary to protect national security
• Explaining State Crime - Neutralisation Theory:

  > Matza - examine the techniques that states use to 'neutralise' (justify) their crimes, by seeking to negotiate or impose a different construction of the event rather than deny it occurred

  > denial of the victim e.g. they are terrorists, they are exaggerating

  > denial of injury e.g. we are the real victims, not them

  > denial of responsibility e.g. I was only obeying orders/doing my duty

  > condemning the condemners e.g. the world is picking on us

  > appeal to higher loyalties (self-righteous justification) e.g. protecting the nation
• Explaining State Crime - Crimes of Obedience (1):

  > state crimes are crimes of conformity as they require obedience to a higher authority - research suggests that many people are willing to obey authority, even when it involves harming others, because of the way we are socialised
• Explaining State Crime - Crimes of Obedience (2):

  > Kelman and Hamilton - from a study of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam (American soldiers killed 400 civilians), they identify three general features that produce crimes of obedience:

  > authorisation - people feel they have a duty to obey authority

  > routinisation - once the crime has been committed, there is a strong pressure to turn the act into a routine that individuals can perform in a detached manner

  > dehumanisation - when the enemy is portrayed as sub-human, normal principles of morality do not apply
• Explaining State Crime - Crime of Modernity:

  > Bauman - modern society creates the conditions which allow crime on a large scale

  > Nazi Germany was a product of modernity - without science, technology and the division of labour, it would not have been able to occur e.g. trains to transport people to concentration camps

  > state crime is a product of modern society's ability to dehumanise victims and turn mass murder into a routine task