State crimes

• Green and Ward

  • Identifies state crimes as illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by or with the company of state agencies
  • 262 million people murdered by governments during 20th century
• McLaughlin - 4 types of state crime

  • Political criminality, corruption
  • Crimes of state/police, genocide
  • Economic crimes, violation of health and safety laws
  • Criminality at social/cultural levels, institutional racism
• Chambliss

  • Identifies state crime as acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representative of the state
  • Yet ignores states have power to make laws so they can avoid criminalising their own actions
• Michalowski

  Identifies state crime as not just illegal acts but also legally permissible acts whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts
• Hillyard et al

  • We should replace study of crimes with zemiology (study of harms or if they're against the law)
  • Field of study too wide, and replaced definition with sociologists definition
• State corporate crimes

  Crimes committed by people in power
• Corporate crimes

  Crime committed by or on behalf of a company, e.g. cheating its customers
• Professional crime

  Committed by professional, e.g. accountant stealing client's funds
• State crime example, Challenger space shuttle

  State imitated corporate crime, failure to check for safety and cost cutting decisions led to 7 deaths
• Labelling theory

  • argues if an act constitutes a crime depends on if social audience for that act defines it as a crime
  • recognises state crime is socially constructed > prevents sociologists imposing their own definitions of state crime
  • Kauzlarich = anti-Iraq war protestors found war harmful, unwilling to label it criminal
• Schwendingers

  Any actions violating human rights should be classed as crimes, regardless if they were against the law
• No conclusive definition of human rights

  • Natural rights = being human, right to life
  • Civil rights = made by humans, right to education
• Cohen criticizes Schwendingers

  Just because something is morally wrong doesn't make it criminal
• Spiral of denial

  1. States deny human rights abuses ever happened
  2. Claims that things aren't as they appear
  3. It's proven that things are as they appear, state claims actions were justified
• Sykes and Matza, Neutralisation theory

  1. Denial of injury = they were fighting back against someone who made the first aggressive move, they started it > not the vicitm
  2. Denial of victims = offender claims victim was in the wrong, exaggerating violence
  3. Denial of responsibility = offender denies it was their fault, acting on orders of someone else / doing their duty
  4. Condemnation of condemners = offender feels sense of unfairness, feel like they're being picked on
  5. Appeal to higher loyalties = bigger reason for committing the act than personal gain, defense of freedom of speech
• Kelman and Hamilton - crimes of obedience

  • Authorisation = acts are ordered/approved by those in higher authority, justification of actions
  • Routinisation = crime becomes routine, done in a clinical detached manner
  • Dehumanisation = 'enemy of the state' is portrayed as sub-human