Crime and Deviance - globalisation and crime

Held et al

Globalisation = the widening, deepening and acceleration of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of life, from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual.

Castells

Globalisation has led to a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion per annum. The drugs trade is worth an estimated $420-$650 billion pear year; money laundering profits $1.5 trillion per year from organised crime.

Taylor

Globalisation has created crimes at both ends of the spectrum; it has allowed transnational corporations to switch manufacturing to low-wage countries, producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty. Globalisation has also created inequality, leading to the increase in crime due to resentment and material deprivation.

Rothe and Friedrichs

International financial organisations impose pro-capitalist neoliberal economic 'structural adjustment programmes' on poor countries as a condition for the foreign aid their provide.

- these programmes often require governments to cut spending on health and education and to privatise publicly-owned services, industries and natural resources.

CREATES CONDITIONS FOR CRIME.

Rothe et al

Pro-capitalist programme imposed on Rwanda in the 1980s led to mass unemployment and formed the economic basis for the 1994 genocide.

Hobbs and Dunningham - glocal crime

Crime is still locally based but with global connections. Changes due to globalisation lead to changes in the pattern of crime (from old hierarchical gang structure to loose network of flexible criminals).

Glenny - McMafia

Origin of transnational crime - breakup of the Soviet Union after 1989, which coincided with the deregulation of global markets. New mafias that formed were purely economic organisations formed to pursue self-interest.

- The Chechen Mafia became a brand name and billionaires paid for protection for their wealth and were able to build links with criminal organisations in other parts of the world.