Globalisation, green crime, human rights and state crime

the global criminal economy, Held et al

Held et al: there has been a globalisation of crime- increasing interconnectedness of crime across national borders

This means there’s new opportunities for crime, as well as new means and new offences like cybercrime.

The global economy has a supply side (drugs, sex workers and goods) and a demand side (rich west demanding these things).

Castells: the global criminal economy takes several forms

1. Arms trafficking

2. Trafficking in nuclear materials

3. Smuggling illegal immigrants

4. Trafficking women and children

5. Sex tourism

6. Trafficking body parts

7. Cyber crimes

8. Green crimes

9. International terrorism

10. Smuggling of legal goods to avoid tax

11. Trafficking artefacts/ endangered species

12. The drugs trade

13. Money laundering

Global risk conciousness

Globalisation produces a new mentality of ‘risk consciousness’ where risk is seen as global instead of tied to certain places.

example of global risk consciousness

 increased movement of people has worried Western populations about the risk of crime and the need to protect borders.

This is due to the media's moral panic of immigrants showing them as terrorists, which increases social control like the UK government fining airlines for bringing in undocumented passengers.

What does Taylor say about globalisation capitalism and crime

argues globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime, creating more inequality and increasing crime.

How does globalisation and capitalism and crime link, making globalisation reproduce inequalities

Globalisation allows transnational corporations to switch manufacturing to low-wage countries- producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty.

Deregulation means governments have less control over their economies

How does the inequalities that capitals reproduces through globalisation cause crime

A lack of legitimate jobs drive the unemployed to look for illegal opportunities, like lucrative drugs trade.

How does globalisation create criminal opportunities for elite groups

deregulating financial markets gives opportunities for insider trading and moving funds around the world to avoid tax.

Globalisations changes in employment lead to:

new opportunities for crime, like subtracting to recruit ‘flexible workers’ who often work illegally or in illegal health/labour conditions

Evaluation of Globalisation Capitalism and crime

though Taylor links global trends in the capitalist economy to changing crime patterns, it doesn’t explain how these changes make people turn to crime. (as not every poor person does)

Rothe and Friedrichs: crimes of globalisation

They focus on the role in international financial organisations like International Monetary fund and World Bank in crimes of globalisation.

Showing that the world bank was dominated by major capitalists, only USA, Japan, Germany, France and Britain had voting rights. this allows western corporations to expand into poorer countries creating conditions for crime

They found the programme in Rwanda caused mass unemployment

Patterns of criminal organisations: Hobbs and Dunningham

They found the way crimes’s organised are linked to economic changes caused by globalisation. It involves individuals with contacts being a ‘hub’ that a loose network can form around. The network involves more individuals seeking opportunities , which often link legitimate and illegitimate opportunities

Glocal organisations

where crime is rooted in a local context but has international links

EG the drugs trade may vary from place to place in local conditions, as well as being influenced by global factors such as drugs available abroad

McMafia Glenny

Glenny uses this to refer to organisations that emerged in Russia/ Eastern Europe after communism fell. Glenny traces the origins of transnational organised crime to break up the Soviet Union after 1989 when aligned with the de-regulatio of global markets. The russian government de-regulated many sectors after communism fell, so wealthy former officials bought diamonds, gas and oil for cheap and sold it on the world market for astronomical prices

Types of green crime

primary green crimes

secondary green crimes

Primary green crimes

crimes that result from directly destroying and degrading the Earths resources

South: 4 types of primary green crime

Crimes of air pollution: burning fossil fuels from industry/transport. Walters says 2x as many people die from this problem than 20 years ago. Criminals: governments, business and consumers

Crimes of deforestation: 1/5 of the worlds tropical rainforests were destroyed between 60’s-90’s. The war on drugs has affected this with spraying the drug plants with pesticide spray. Criminals: the state, logging companies

Crimes of species decline/animal abuse: 50 species a day are becoming extinct

Crimes of water pollution: 25M a year die from contaminated water. Marine pollution threatens 58% of earth’s ocean reefs.

What are secondary green crimes

crimes that grow from flouting the rules that aim to regulate/prevent environmental disasters, something the government does.

States violence against oppositional groups

though states condemn terrorism, they use other illegal methods themselves

EG in 1985 the French secret service blew up the Greenpeace ship in New Zealand that was there to prevent green crimes like the French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.

Hazardou waste and organised crime

disposal of toxic waste from chemical/nuclear/other industries is highly profitable

Businesses may dump waste illegally because its cheaper, such as eco-mafias in Italy profiting from illegal dumping. This process is global in nature, like tsunami of 2004 washing up illegal waste from European in companies on to the shores of Somalia. Western businesses may ship waste to be processed in poor countries because its $3 per tonne.

Environmental discrimination

how South describes how poorer groups are worst affected by pollution

Green criminology

Some ask: if the pollution that causes global warming/acid rain is legal and crime has been committed, is it a matter for criminology

Traditional Criminology

Not concerned with this because no law have been broken.

The beginning of this approach comes from national/international regulations about the environment

Don’t see as an issue because it isn’t against the written law

Situ and Emmons: Traditonal crionoly

define environmental crime as an ‘unauthorised act/omission that violates the law’

Advantages of traditional criminolgy

this approach includes a clearly defined subject matter

Disadvantages of traditional criminology

includes accepting definitions of crime from powerful groups who serve their own interest

White: Green criminology

takes a more radical approach by starting from the notion of harm instead of criminal law

white argues the subject of criminology is any action that harms physical environment/person, no matter whether it breaks the law or not.

This should be a global approach to environmental harm, as traditional criminology is limited to what different state laws perceive as a crime against the environment

White -Two types of harm

Anthropocentric: White says nation-states and transnational companies assume humans right to dominate nature for their benefit and put economic growth above all else

Ecocentric: views humans and environment as interdependent, meaning environmental harm also harms us.

Evaluation of green criminology

recognises the growing importance of environmental issues and the need to address the harms and risks of environmental damage to humans and otherwise.

However, it focuses on this broader concept of harms instead of legally defined crime, which makes it hard to distinguish what is a green crime and what isn’t. Political statements should be made to address this

Global risk society and the environment

Environmental crimes such as Chernobyl show us how threats to human’s and nature are often man-made instead of natural like droughts and famines,

Beck: we’re in late modern society and ca now provide resources for all. However, the increase in productivity and tech that sustains it have created ‘manufactured risks’ such as greenhouse gases emissions from industry’s

Mozambique in 2010

• shows how the global nature of human-made risk can cause crime/disorder as global heating in russia caused the hottest heatwave in a century, destroying their grain belts

• the shortage led to russia imposing bans as well as pushing up the world price of grain.

• This had a knock-on-effect on Mozambique, where the 30% rise in bread caused rioting and looting of food stores, which resulted in deaths

State crimes: Green and Ward

they define state crime as illegal or eviant activities perpetrated by or with the complicity of state agencies.

This incudes all forms of crime committed by/on behalf of states and governments in order to further their policies , but does not include acts that merely benefit individuals who work for the state, like police officers

State crime is the most serious crime for 2 reasons:

the scale of state crime

the state is the source of law

the scale of state crime

a states enormous power means they can harm on a huge scale

Green and Ward: cite a fig of 262M people murdered by governments during the 20th century

the state is the source of law

the state has he role of defining what is and what isn’t criminal, uphold the law, prosecute offenders

this power means they can conceal crimes, evade punishment and even avoid defining their own actions as criminal

the principle of national sovereignty stops external authorities like the United Nations from intervening

McLaughlin: case studies of state crime

Political crimes: corruption and censorship

Crimes by security an police forces: genocide, torture

Economic crimes: official violations of health and safety laws

Social and cultural crimes: institutional racism

Genocide in Rwanda

There was 2 different groups in Rwanda, the Tutsis were the minority and hey had the power, the Hutus were the majority. These two groups weren’t ethically different at all, it was just constructed due to Belgians making them separate

There was almost an exchange of power where the Hutus became in charge and the Tutsis lost power, the Hutus then became threatened and a so a violent stream of propaganda against the Tutsis began this led to around 800,000 being murdered by the Hutus, hutu civilians were forced to participate in these murders or else they would be killed.

The Hutus committed a mass genocide against the minority

what does the UN define genocide as

acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,ethnic racial, or religious group.

War crimes

ilegal wars

crimes committed during war or in aftermath

illegal wars

international law means that apart from self defence, only the UN Security Council can declare war

This means many see the US- led wars in Afghanistan/Iraq as illegal

Kramer and Michalowski: argue that to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion as self defence, the USA and UK falsely claimed the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction

Crimes committed during war or in the aftermath

Whyte: describes the US’s neoliberal colonisation of Iraq, where the constitution was illegally changed so the economy could be privatised. Iraqi oil revenues were seized to pay for ‘reconstructions’ and in 2004 $48B went to US firms

Kramer: terror bombings has been normalised, as the American fire-bombings of 67 Japanese cities and atomic bombings of Hiroshima has no trials for war crimes

State-corporate crime

state crimes are often committed in conjunction with corporate crimes

Kramer and Michalowski: there’s a state initiated and state facilitated corporate crime

State initiated corporate crime

where states initiate, direct or approve of corporate crime

EG Challenger space shuttle disaster, where negligent cost-cutting decisions by stage agency NASA and corporation Morton Thiokol caused an explosion that killed 7

State facilitated corporate crime

where states fail to regulate/control corporate behaviour, making crime easier.

Chambliss: defining state crime: through domestic law

He defines state crime as, acts which are defined by the law as criminal and which are committed by state officials.

However this is problematic because it fails to understand tat it is the state tat write these laws allowing them to carry out harmful acts without being prosecuted

how is state crime defined by social harm

some people define state crime based on the harm ist has on society, this definition prevents the state from ruling themselves out of court by making laws that allow thm to create harm

however whoo decides wt counts as harm, its very vague

how is state crime dfiend by human rights

natural rights: the right to life and freedom of speech

civil rights: the right to vote, privacy, a fair trial, education etc

Some define state crime as a violation of human rights by the state

Explaining state crime: the authoritarian perosnaility

Adorno et al: identifies this personality, which incudes a willingness to obey the orders or superiors without question. They argue many Germans in WW2 had this due to disciplinarian socialisation patterns happening at the time