Globalisation and Crime

Global Criminal Economy

Held

There has been a globalisation of crime, meaning there has been an interconnectedness of crime across national borders. They say that there has been a spread of transnational organised crime. Globalisation creates new opportunities for crime, such as trafficking body parts and people, cybercrimes, green crimes, money laundering, smuggling immigrants and goods. Global criminal economy.

Global Risk Consciousness

Globalisation creates new insecurities and creates a mentality of risk consciousness. Globalisation has led to an increased movement of people, such as migrants seeking work, and asylum seekers fleeing persecution. This has created a rise in anxiety among Westerners about the risks of crime, therefore, they feel a need to protect their borders. These risks come from the media, which gives them an exaggerated view of the dangers we face, for example, the media portrays immigrants as threats and as terrorists, this had led to hate crimes, racism and discrimination and an increase in non-utilitarian crimes. It has also led to tighter social control at the borders. For example, in the UK, there is no legal limit on how long an immigrant can be kept in detention.

Globalisation, Capitalism and Crime

Taylor

Globalisation has created greater inequality, which raises crime. It has allowed transnational companies to switch their manufacturing to low-wage countries, which allows them to pay third-world workers less than what they would sell the product for, which means the capitalists gain even more profit than before. As they have switched their manufacturing to low-wage countries, it strips the working class of their jobs. This creates job insecurity, unemployment and poverty. Due to this, it can cause frustration, which can lead to non-utilitarian crimes, such as violence. Furthermore, due to poverty, they may feel like crime is the only way they can survive, and also the lack of legitimate means they have to resort to illegitimate means, in order to achieve a cultural goal of money and wealth. Society has an increasingly materialistic culture, which portrays success as having a certain type of lifestyle. All of these factors promote insecurity and widen inequality. For example, in LA, deindustrialisation has led to the growth of drug gangs of around 10k members.                   

Green Crimes

 

Global Risk Society

Beck

Beck argues that in today’s society, we create risks by our own making. So, in today’s late modern society, we need to be able to provide adequate resources for our developed countries, however the increase in productivity and technology has created new manufactured risks, they create harm to the environment and consequences for humanity, such as global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions this means society is a global risk society.

Green Criminology’s

Traditional criminology does not necessarily regard green crime as a crime, they define what is criminal as what is regarded illegal in criminal law. Therefore, if green crime is not defined as criminal by the law, then essentially no law has been broken. So they would look at the national and international laws concerning the environment to define what should be regarded as a green crime or not. A good thing is that it has a defined subject matter, which means what is regarded as criminal is not regarded as ambiguous, and it is clear. There would be no question about what is criminal or not. However, it is criticised because they accept the law which is shaped by capatlists which want to serve their own interests, however green criminologists, White, he argues that what should be regarded a crime is any action that produces harmful results, including harm to the physical environment, humans and animals even if no law has been broken, is it still a crime? The disadvantage of this sin oat it is ambiguous; there is no consistent standard of harm, and we do not know what extent of harm that is needed for an action to be criminal.

Types of green crime

South

Primary green crimes are crimes that result directly from the destruction of the Earth's resources, such as crimes of air pollution (burning fossil fuels and taking transport). The second type is secondary green crimes, crimes that occur from rules that are put into place to prevent environmental disasters. An example of this, a rule put into place for safe and legal disposals; however, because of the high costs of these, businesses decide to dispose of waste illegally in order to maximise their profit. For example, in Italy, a company profited from illegally dumping into the sea.

State Crime

The most serious form of crime, 2 reasons.

1. Scale of state crime, the state’s enormous power, allows it to inflict harm on a huge scale, for example, 262 million people were murdered during the 20th century.

2. The state is the source of law; it is the role of the state to define what is criminal, Therefore, they can manipulate the law in order to justify their crimes, they can also conceal their crimes, and prevent punishment for them.

Defining State Crime

Human Rights

Schwendinger

She makes the distinction between natural rights, which are rights that a human being should have, such as the right to life and liberty. And civil rights, which are based on political matters such as the right to vote and the right to education. They argue that we should define state crime as a violation of basic human rights, so the states that practice state crimes deny people their basic rights.

Evaluation

Cohen says that yes, they are violations of human rights, they are not really criminal, they are morally unacceptable.

Social harms and Zemiology

Micahalowski

They define state crime as legally permissible acts whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts in the harm they cause. This can be seen with the example of a soldier and a normal person, in the act of war, killing people is not seen as illegal; however, when a normal person does it, killing is seen as illegal, therefore, the extent is harm is similar, however one is legal the oteher is illegal. They argue that state crimes should be regarded as illegal because they produce harmful results, therefore, things should be labelled as criminal if they produce harm.

Criticism – To what extent of harm? And who decides what counts as harm?

Authoritarian Personality

Adorno

State crimes cannot happen without the cooperation of ordinary soldiers and civilians. The reason why they participate in genocides is due to an authoritarian personality, which is the willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question, this means civilians would commit state crime and commit harmful actions, simply because that is what they were told to do, and they obeyed immediately for example during the second world war many Germans had an authoritarian personality, due to the socialisation of that time explaining why they carried out torture and genocide.

Crimes of obedience

Crime is defined as a deviance from social norms; instead of state crimes instead of being identified as a deviant by the state. Instead, people conform to the norms of the state crimes, people are willing to obey authority even when it involves harming others, and two types of conformity could be. Normative social influence, whereby civilians may participate in state crimes because everyone may also be participating. Informational social influence, as the orders are coming from authority figures, they may conform and participate in state crimes, because they think it is the right thing to do. Propaganda may also be used to brainwash individuals and make them seem they are a hero to society if they partake, or a failure.