state crime

State crime

• illegal or deviant activities by or with the complicity of state agencies.

McLaughlin

• Four categories of state crime:

  • Political (e.g. corruption)

  • Economic (e.g. corporate crime)

  • Social/cultural (e.g. institutional racism)

  • Crimes by security/police forces

Power of state crimes

• large scale crimes e.g. holocaust

• UN intervention

• Evade punishment or justify crimes

Cohen

• Some acts (e.g. torture) are clearly crimes; others (e.g. economic exploitation) are morally ambiguous.

• States justify abuses through a spiral of denial:

  1. Deny it happened.

  2. Reframe the act (e.g. self-defence).

  3. Justify it (e.g. war on terror).

Sykes and Matza

techniques of neutralisation :

• Denial of victim (“they’re terrorists”)

• Denial of injury (“we’re the real victims”)

• Denial of responsibility (“just following orders”)

• Condemning the condemners (“everyone’s picking on us”)

• Appeal to higher loyalty (“national security”)

Law perspective

• State crime = violation of international or domestic law by the state.

  • Pros: Uses globally agreed definitions.

  • Cons: Focuses mainly on war crimes; definitions are politically constructed.

Types of state crime

• Genocide

• War crimes

• Torture

• Imprisonment