Topic 8 - Globalisation, green crime, human rights and state crime

Who argues that the global criminal economy is taking a number of different forms

• Castells

• Criminal economy is now worth over 1 trillion pounds per annum

• Takes different forms such as trafficking, smuggling, cyber crimes, green crimes, drug trade

Explain what demand and supply side of global criminal organisations

• Demand for products in the west

• Supply of products from poorer countries

• E.g. in Colombia 20% of the population depend on cocaine production

What does global risk consciousness mean

• Risk is now global and not tied to a particular place

• Increased in movement of migrants seeking work has cause rising anxieties to western countries

Who argues that globalisation has led to the change in pattern and extent of crime

• Taylor

How has globalisation caused changes to patterns of crime

• Deregulation means government has little control on manufacturing wages, TNC can exploit workers causing widening insecurity and inequality

• Deregulations of the financial markets created opportunities for insider trading

Who argues that the IMF and world bank cause ‘crime of globalisation’

• Rothe and Friedrichs

How does the IMF and world bank cause crime of globalisation

• These bodies encourage pro-capitalist neoliberal economic structural adjustment programmes for the poor

• This allows Western corporations to expand into the countries and create crime such as exploitation and genocide

Who argued that IMF and world bank may not break any laws but their action can cause widespread harm

• Cain

• Act as a ‘global state’ and may not break any laws but can also cause widespread social harms

Who argues the changes in patterns of criminal organisations

• Hobbs and Dunningham

• Involves individuals with a loose-knit network form composed of individuals linking legitimate and illegitimate opportunities

What do Hubbs and Dunningham mean by ‘Glocal’ organisations, how has this changed patterns of criminal organisation

• Globalised forms of crime with international links

• Use global networks for trade but are using local connections to find opportunity to sell their drugs

• This has shifted structure to loose knit flexible, opportunistic and entrepreneurial crime

Who discusses the pattern of organisations that emerged in Russia and Eastern Europe

• McMafia - Glenny

What example does Glenny show McMafia

• Russias capitalist class, to protect their wealth engaged in ‘Mafias’

• Based on purely economic organisation for self interest

• Able to link criminal organisations in other parts of the world

Who argues that there is manufacturing risk that causes green crimes

• Beck

• Increase in productivity causes manufactured risk

• Risk towards the environment such as global warming, greenhouse gas emissions

Definition for traditional criminology and who argues it

• Defined by the criminal law, but no law has been broken

• Situ and Emmons - unauthorised act or omission that violates the law

What does green criminology include that traditional doesnt + sociologist

• Starts from the notion of harm rather than criminal law

• White - action that harms the physical environment and//or humans and non humans, even if no law is broken

What form of criminology is green criminology

• Transgressive criminology

• Oversteps the boundary to include new issues

What is the approach of transgressive criminology also known as + meaning

• Zemiology

• The study of harm

Who adopts a anthropocentric view of crime

• White

• Anthropocentric of human-centric view of environmental harm

• Humans have a right to dominate nature and this puts economic growth before the environment

What does this sociologist contrast the anthropocentric view with

• White

• Ecocentric view

• Sees humans and the environment as interdependent so that environmental harm also hurts humans

What view does green criminology adopt

• Adopts the ecocentric view as the basis for judging environmental harm

Who identifies both primary and secondary green crime

• South

• Primary - crime that results directly from the destruction and degradation of the earths resources

• Secondary - crime that results from breaking of laws meant to protect the environment

What are examples of primary crime

• Air pollution

• Deforestation

• Specie decline and animal abuse

• Water pollution

What are some examples of secondary crime

• state violence against oppositional groups

• Hazardous waste and organised crime

• Environmental discrimination

Criticisms of green criminology

• Difficult to define the boundaries of the field of study clearly

Sociologist and definition of state crime

• Green and Ward

• Illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicit of state agencies

Why is state crime may be seen as the most serious forms of crime

• The scale of state crime

• The state is the source of law

Who identifies 4 categories of state crime and name them

• McLaughlin

  1. Political crime (corruption)

  2. Crime by security and police force (genocide)

  3. Economic crimes (violation of health and safety)

  4. Social and cultural crime (institutional racism)

How was the genocide in Rwanda considered a state crime

• Tutsi and Hutu, Hutu was majority, Tutsi owned livestock, they were more like social classes but Belgians separated into two groups

• Hutus led to power after independence, economic and political crisis led to civil wars

• In 100 days 800000 Tutsis were slaughtered

• Third of the Hutu population are estimated to have actively participated in the genocide

Who explained the difference between a state initiated and state facilitated corporate crime

• Kramer and Michalowski

Example of state initiated corporate crime

• The challenger space shuttle disaster

• When state approve corporate crime

• Risky cost cutting decisions by NASA led t the explosion that killed seven astronauts 73s after blast off

Example of state facilitated corporate crime

• Deepwater horizon oil rig disaster

• State failed to regulate and control

• Rig leased by BP exploded and sank, killing 11 workers and causing a large oil spill

What are the two types of war-related crimes

• Illegal wars

• Crimes committed during war or its aftermath

What do Kramer and Michalowski use as an example of illegal wars

• To justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as self defence the USA and UK knowingly made false clamps that the Iraqis possessed weapons of mass destruction

What does Kramer argue is n example of crimes committed during war or its aftermath

• Terror bombing of civilians has become ‘normalised’

• WW2 with the American fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities and atomic bomb of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Who argues that state crime is abuse to power to break the law

• Chambliss

• Acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representative of the state

Which sociologists recognises that harm done by the states is not against the law

• Michalowski

• Not just illegal acts but legal acts whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts in the harm they cause

Who argues that state crime is an action that violates international law and state own domestic law

• Rothe and Mullins

What does human rights include

• Natural rights

• Civil rights

Who argues/what is the authoritarian personality

• Adorno et al

• Obeying orders from superior without question

• Disciplinary socialisation, taught to do it from young

What is crime of obedience

• People are willing to obey authority even when this involves harming others

• Kellman and Hamilton argued this is because it is routine to them and become dehumanised to what they are doing

Who argued that certain features of modern society can explain state crime

• Bauman

• Features that made the Holocaust possible

  1. Division of labour - small tasks so no one person feels like they are responsible for the autrocity

  2. Making the job repetitive and routine

  3. Efficient methods are used to achieve a goal

  4. Improvements in science and technology

Who argues that the state justifies their crimes

• Cohen

• Try using techniques of neutralisation

• Denial of victim

• Denial of industry

• Condemning the condemners

• Appealing to a higher loyalty