case studies of state crime

• Mclaughlin


  4 main categories of state crime

  • political criminality
  • crimes of state security and police
  • economics crimes
  • criminality at social and cultural levels
• political criminality


  crimes such as corruption and censorship
• crimes by security and police

  crimes such as genocide, torture
• economic crimes


  crimes such as violations of health and safety laws
• social and cultural crimes

  crimes such as institutional racism
• green and ward

  • state crime is any illegal or deviant activities perpetuated by state agencies
  • includes all forms of crime committed by states and governments in order to further their policies
• most serious crime for 2 reasons

  1. scale of state crime
  2. state is a source of law
• michalowski and Kramer - scale of state crime

  • state’s enormous power gives it the potential to inflict harm on a huge scale
  • state that Great power and great crimes are inseparable. Economic and political elites can bring death, disease, and loss to tens of thousands with a single decision.’
• state is the source of law

  • 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 punishment for them
  • democracies such as Britain have been guilty of crimes but due to national sovereignty, makes it difficult for UN to intervene
• national sovereignty

  • principle suggesting that states are the supreme authority within their own borders
• genocide 


  UN defines this as acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group
• rwanda genocide 1994

  • 1922 - became a Belgian colony
  • 2 groups in Rwanda: Hutus and tusis
  • Belgians segregated the 2 groups e.g issued them racial identity cards
  • 1962 - Rwanda independence - majority of Hutus in power
  • 1990s - led to civil war between Hutus and tusis
  • 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered, legitimated with dehumanising labels describing Tutsis as ‘cockroaches’ and ‘rats’. 
• michalowski and Kramer - 2 types of state-corporate crimes

  state crimes often in conjunction with corporate crimes

  1. state-initiated corporate crime - state initiate corporate crime
  2. state-facilitated corporate crime - states fail to control corporate behaviour
• the challenger space shuttle disaster - state initiated corporate crime

  • 1986 - negligent and cost-cutting decisions by the state agency NASA and the corporation Morton Thiokol led to the explosion that killed seven astronauts 73 seconds after blast-off 
• deepwater horizon oil rig disaster - state-facilitated corporate crime

  • The rig, leased by BP, exploded and sank, killing eleven workers and causing the largest accidental oil spill in history, with major health, environmental and economic impacts.
  • official enquiry found that while the disaster resulted from decisions by the companies involved (BP, Halliburton and Transocean), government regulators had failed to oversee the industry
• illegal wars

  • wars can only be declared by the UN Security Council
  • many see the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of the ‘war on terror’ as illegal. 
• crimes committed during war

  • kramer and michalowski - torture of prisoners in Iraq war
  • kramer - terror bombing in WW2
  • Whyte - describes the USA’s ‘neo-liberal colonisation’ of Iraq, in which the constitution was illegally changed so that the economy could be privatised