Globalisation and crime

1. Globalisation and crime:

Growing global risk consciousness and the intensification of social control?

P= Growing global risk consciousness and the intensification of social control

E= Beck> Late modernity is a era of ‘risks’, people are now more conscious of ‘risks’ (dangers) which threaten their everyday lives.
Globalisation creates new insecurities and produces a new mentality of ‘risk consciousness’ in which risk is seen as global rather than tied to particular places.
Much of people’s knowledge comes from the media, which exaggerates these global dangers.

E= Migrants seeking work or as asylum seekers fleeing prosecution has given rise to anxieties among populations in Western countries about the risks of crime and disorder and the need to protect boarders. The media then creates a moral panic about the supposed ‘threat’, often fuelled by politicians. This can lead to hate crimes against minorities.

E= Intensification of social control at the national level

Deregulation and marketisation in capitalism increasing crime?

P= Deregulation and marketisation in capitalism increasing crime

E= Taylor> argues that globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime. By giving free reign to market forces, globalisation has created greater inequality and rising crime.
Globalisation has created crime at both ends of the social spectrum

E= The poor…
Deregulation means governments now have little control over their own economies e.g. to create jobs or raise taxes, while state spending on welfare has declined. Leading to growing inequality which accounts for some committing crime (cost of living has risen).

E= Doesn’t adequately explain other responses e.g) not all poor people turn to crime/some business fail rather than commit criminal acts for profit.

Cultural globalisation and the ideology of consumerism increasing crime?

P= Cultural globalisation and the ideology of consumerism increasing crime

E= Mass tourism, migration and the influence of the media has spread a similar culture and ideology of consumerism across the globe.
In media-saturated contemporary societies, everyone in both developed and developing countries are constantly exposed to the ideology that the ‘good life’ lies in obtaining consumer goods associated with affluent Western lifestyles.

E= Young points out many people have little chance of achieving this and a ‘bulimic society’ encourages people to turn to crime in many countries.
a Bulimic society is a society in which the poorest most deprived people see the goods but cannot obtain them

E= Doesn’t mean deprivation leads to crime
Doesn’t talk about corporate crime (crimes of rich and powerful)

Globalisation and de-industrialisation have created new opportunities for crime?

P= Globalisation and de-industrialisation have created new opportunities for crime

E= Opportunities for new types of crime e.g. terrorism, cyber crime, trafficking of goods, people and animals, green crime etc.
Crimes committed in one country can have perpetrators located in another making it difficult to know which state is responsible.
New means of carrying out crimes – speed, convenience and anonymity of the internet
Hobbs and Dunningham> Glocal system –organised crime have international links but are still rooted in local context.

E= Containerisation> the transport of goods across the world in container ships, which can be inter-changed between ships, trains and trucks. Drugs, people, weapons and counterfeit goods can easily be trafficked via these containers.
Cyber-crime> phishing, scams, hacking

E= Not everyone turns to crime

Globalisation has created a supply and demand global criminal economy?

P= Globalisation has created a supply and demand global criminal economy

E= The spread of transnational organised crime, new means of committing crime and new offences such as various cyber-crimes.
Castells> argues there is now a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion per annum.
The global criminal economy has both a demand side and a supply side. Part of the reason for the scale of transnational organised crime is the demand for its products.
Demand – Westernised / Developed / Rich countries e.g. UK, Europe, USA.

E= Colombia> estimated 20% of the population depends on cocaine production for their livelihood and cocaine outsells all Colombia’s other exports.

E= More opportunities for catching criminals through globalisation
Exaggerates the negatived of globalisation

2. Green crime:

Primary green crimes?

P= Primary green crimes

E= Crimes that result directly from the destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources
Crimes of air pollution> burning fossil fuels
Crimes of deforestation> destroying the rainforest through drug production, logging to rear beef cattle.

E= Walters estimated 24,000 British residents die prematurely every year and thousands more are hospitalised, because of air pollution.
Between 50 to 90% of forestry in tropical areas is now controlled by criminal groups, according the United Nations as a result of deforestation – illegal logging – only 10% of the original primary forest cover remains today.

Secondary green crimes?

P= Secondary green crimes

E=  Crimes that come from the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters. 
State violence against oppositional groups> states condemn terrorism, but they have been prepared to resort to similar illegal methods themselves.
Environmental discrimination: Poorer groups are worse affected by pollution.

E= The French secret service blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. The vessel was there to try to prevent French nuclear weapon testing in the South Pacific.
Black communities in the USA often find their housing situated next to garbage dumps or polluting industries.

Explanations for who/commits and who are the victims of green crime:

Global risk society?

P= Global risk society

E= Beck> Most of the threats to the environment are of our own making (manmade as opposed to being natural).
Argues that in today’s society we can now provide adequate resources for all (in developed countries), which leads to a massive increase in productivity and technology to sustain this.
This leads to new risks, dangers we haven’t seen before – harm to the environment from greenhouse gases and the impact on humanity.
Many of these risks are global rather than local in nature, which leads Beck to describe society as a ‘global risk society’. 

E= Mozambique – heavily dependent on food imports – was a 30% rise in the price of bread which sparked rioting and looting of food stores that left a dozen dead.

Capitalism, greed and corporate crime?

P= Capitalism, greed and corporate crime

E= White> illustrates the globalised character of environmental harms by the way transnational corporations move manufacturing operations to the developing countries to avoid pollution laws in more developed countries,
illegally dump European waste or send it for processing to developing countries where disposal costs and health and safety standards are lower and enforcement action is less effective.

E= Wolf> identifies four groups who commit environmental crimes…
Private business organisations> Environmental crime is a typical example of corporate crime and it is large corporations that are responsible for the bulk of land, air and water pollution, through emissions of toxic materials, the dumping of waste and breaches of health and safety regulations.
Nike treating their employees badly

Social inequalities and the victims of green crime?

P= Social inequalities and the victims of green crime

E= Wolf> points out that there are wide inequalities in the distribution of harm and risks to victims caused by environmental destruction, and in how laws are made, applied and enforced.
Current social divisions are reinforced by environmental harms, with the least powerful – the working class, the poor and minority ethnic groups – being the most likely victims of green crimes, in both developed and developing countries.

E= People living in the under developed world’s unwanted waste, face far greater risks of exposure to environmental air, water and land pollution than those in the developed world.

3. State crime:

Using domestic or international law to define state crime and the problem of social construction and dominant ideologies?

P= Using domestic or international law to define state crime and the problem of social construction and dominant ideologies

E= The state is the source of law within nations, and itself defines what a crime is. It therefore has the power to avoid defining its own act as criminal
States have the power to disguise, decriminalise and justify these offences by defining them as something other than crimes.
Strand and Truman> International law is also socially constructed and intentionally designed to deal with state crime.

E= Labelling theory> Whether an act constitutes a crime depends on whether the social audience for that act defines it as a crime. The audience may witness the act either directly or indirectly e.g. through media reports.

Using human rights to define state crime?

P= Using human rights to define state crime

E= Natural Rights> people have simply by virtue of existing e.g. the right to life, liberty and free speech.
Civil Rights> the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality
Schwendinger and Schwendinger> we should define state crime as the violation of people’s basic human rights by the state or its agents. Therefore, states that practise imperialism, racism, sexism or economic exploitation are committing crimes because they are denying people their basic rights.

E= Human rights cases that have transformed Britain> assisting suicide is still a crime, police must investigate rape claims, police can’t keep you on their database forever.

E= Human rights are hard to define because there are disagreements about what counts.

Psychological explanations?

P= Psychological explanations

E= Adorno et al> Authoritarian personality- a willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question. At the time of WWII, many Germans had authoritarian personality types due to the punitive, disciplinarian socialisation patterns that were common at the time.
Research suggests that people who carry out torture and genocide are not psychopaths (a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behaviour)
Kelton and Hamilton> 3 features that produce crimes of obedience- authorisation, routinisation, dehumanisation

E= Green and ward> Individuals who become ‘tortures’ need to be re-socialised, trained and exposed to propaganda about ‘the enemy’.
Milgram> study showed that people are willing to obey authority even when this involves harming others.
Bauman> key features of modern society that made the Holocaust possible- division of labour, science and technology, instrumental rationality

The culture of denial and the state’s ability to re-label behaviours?

P= The culture of denial and the state’s ability to re-label behaviours

E= Cohen> notes that perpetrators of state crimes often do not see themselves as criminal. Dictatorships will flatly deny any human rights abuses. Whereas, democratic states have to legitimate their actions in a more complex way. They employ techniques of neutralisation to justify their actions, they use a ‘spiral of state denial’

1. ‘It didn’t happen’ e.g. the state claims there was no massacre. But then human rights organisations, victims and the media show it did happen.

2. ‘If it did happen, it is something else’ e.g. the state says it was self-defence, not murder.

3. ‘Even if it is what you say it is, it’s justified’ e.g. to fight the ‘war on terror’.

E= Denial of victim> They exaggerate; ‘they are terrorists’; ‘they are used to violence’; ‘look way they do to each other’.
Denial of injury> ’We are the real victims, not them’.