T8; STATE CRIME 2

- Defining state crime ; CHAMBERLISS (domestic law), Social harms + zemiology (MICHALOWSKI + HILLYARD ET AL), labelling + societal reaction, international law, human rights (HERMAN + SCHWENDINGER, RISSE ET AL // COHEN CRITIC // counter critic GREEN + WARD) - Explaining state crime; The authoritarian personality (ADORNO ET AL) w/ supp ARENDT, Crimes of obedience (GREEN + WARD, KELMAN + HAMILTON), Modernity (BAUMAN) - the culture of denial, techniques of neutralisation (COHEN)

Many ways to define → how does CHAMBERLISS use DOMESTIC LAW to define state crime? How can this be critiqued , using a state's own domestic law to define state crime is inadequate as….? How can this be critiqued in a global way?

• 'acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representatives of the state'

• ignores state powers of law-making → so they can avoid criminalising their own actions + create laws to legalise harmful e.g NAZI’S STREILISATION OF DISABLED

• definition also leads to inconsistencies. For example, the same act may be illegal on one side of a border but legal on the other.

What is the approach that recognises that much of the harm done by states is not against the law in defining state crime? How does Michalowski (1985) therefore defines state crime as including not just…. whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts' in the harm they cause?

• Similarly, How does Hillyard et al (2004) argue that we should take a much wider view of state wrongdoing?

• Social harms and zemiology e.g green criminology (transgressive)

• illegal acts, but also legally permissible acts

• by replacing the study of crimes w/ zemiology - study of harms e.g state-facilitated poverty

How is Social harms and zemiology approach helpful in defining State Crime?

• prevent state ruling themselves out of court, law-making powers etc

• creates a single standard universally to harm to humans, environment — objectivity

How is social harms + zemiology criticised?

• critics → vague definition e.g what level of harm = occur to be defined as crime? Who decided what counts as harm?

How do labelling theorists define state crime in ref. to societal reaction? How is this societal reaction created?

• whether an act constitutes a crime depends on whether the social audience for that act defines it as a crime.

• The audience may witness the act either directly or indirectly, for example through media reports.

What is positive about labelling theorists attempt to define crime? What is negative?

• comp. zemiology

• who is…

• conflict theorists // remember interact v structuralist approach

• Pos

  • sees state crime is socially constructed, therefore can vary over time, culture etc

  • prevents sociologist imposing own definition when it may not be the reality unlike zeimology

• Neg

  • However, vaguer than zemiology

  • who is supposed to be the relevant audience to define state crime as criminal?

  • ignores fact audience perceptions = manipulated by ideology

what does it mean by sociologist’s definition of state crime being based on international law?

• law created through treaties and agreements between states, such as the Geneva and Hague Conventions on war crimes.

How does ROTHE + MULLINS define state crime using international law? pos? kinda globalised links perp ig Criticsms? japan, focuses

• a state crime as any action by or on behalf of a state that violates international law and/or a state's own domestic law.

• advantage = not depend on the sociologist's own personal definitions of harm or who the relevant social audience is. Instead it uses globally agreed definitions of state crime.

  • internationally designed → universal in dealing w/ state crime

• tis a social construct involving use of power e.g foreign powers, japan, use bribery, crime, to persuade 6 small caribbean islands to vote against ban of whaling, crime

• focuses on war crimes + against humanity rather than state crimes of economic, political, social + cultural crime e.g corruption

Some sociologists use human rights as a way of defining state crime. What do human rights include?

• Natural rights that people have simply by virtue of existing, such as the right to life, liberty and free speech.

• Civil rights, such as the right to vote, to privacy, to a fair-trial, or to education.

What do Herman and Julia Schwendinger (1975) argue that we should define state crime as using human rights?

• as the violation of people's basic human rights by the state or its agents.

  • E.G those who practice imperialism, racism, sexism or economic exploitation are committing crimes because they are denying people their basic rights.

what is one advantage of the human rights approach in defining state crime according to RISSE-ET-AL? What does this makes them susceptible to, which can provide leverage to make them respect their citizens' rights?

• that virtually all states care about their human rights image, because these rights are now global social norms.

• 'shaming' a

• In regards to human rights, For Schwendingers, the definition of crime is….

  • What does acceptance of a legal definition mean? What do they argue that the sociologist's role should be? In turn what is their view an example of like the ‘harms approach’?

• Who and how are they criticised? What is another criticism? How does Green and Ward (2012) counter this illustrated by the purposeful Irish famine 1940s (denial of human rights + state crime)?

• inevitably political

  • acceptance of legal definition → subservience, role of sociologists = defend human rights if neccessary against the state’s laws

• transgressive criminology - goes beyond trad boundaries of criminology

• Cohen - While gross violations of human rights, such as torture, are clearly crimes. Other acts, such as economic exploitation, are not self-evidently criminal, even if we find them morally unacceptable e.g inevitable in capitalism therefore not clear criminality

  • also disagreements = what = human right.

  • most inc. life and liberty, some not hunger.

    • counter → view that liberty = not much use if people are too malnourished to exercise it

While genocides may be ordered and organised by leaders of states, they cannot happen without…; Why and how?

the cooperation of ordinary soldiers, police and civilians e.g nazi + rwanda

One explanation for state crime is Adorno et al’s (1950)…includes….

• 'authoritarian personality'

• a willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question.

How is the authoritarian personality used to explain state crimes like genocide using WW2? What does this highlight about the assumption that people who carry out torture and genocide must be psychopaths illustrated by Arendt's (2006) study of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann?

• many Germans had authoritarian personality types due to the punitive, disciplinarian socialisation patterns that were common at the time.

• research → little psychological difference between

  them and 'normal' people; showed him to be relatively normal and not even particularly anti-Semitic.

What is Crime is usually defined as? How does this contrast state crimes? In turn, how does this explain state crime ?

• deviance from social norms

• crimes of conformity → crimes of obedience

• require obedience to a higher authority - the state or its representative, even if involves harming others.

  
  

Focusing on the social conditions in which atrocities become acceptable or even required, how can crimes of obedience be used to explain state crime according to Green and Ward in reference to overcome norms against the use of cruelty?

• individual socialisation e.g individuals who become torturers often need to be re-socialised, trained and exposed to propaganda about 'the enemy'

According to the explanation of the crime of obedience, what do states create ' where torture is practised, such as military bases? What does this allow for the torturer?

• ‘enclaves of barbarism' segregated from outside society

• regard it as a '9 to 5' job from which they can return to normal everyday life.

What Kelman and Hamilton (1989) three general features that produce crimes of obedience do they identify?

• A.. - what is ordered/approved? what is replaced?

• R.. → what is there a pressure for? why?

• D.. → in turn, what doesn’t apply?

• Authorisation → acts are ordered or approved by those in authority, normal moral principles = replaced by the duty to obey.

• Routinisation → commit → strong pressure → repeat in detached manner/routine

• Dehumanisation→ enemy = subhuman, normal principles of morality = not apply

How does Bauman (1989) highlight key features of modern society that made the Holocaust possible suggesting modernity as an explanation for state crime?

• DOL →

• Bureaucratisation →

• I…

• S..

• DOL → no-one felt personally responsible for the atrocity.

• Bureaucratisation → normalised killing = repetitive, rule-governed and routine 'job', victims could be dehumanised as mere 'units'.

• Instrumental rationality → Where rational, efficient methods are used to achieve a goal, regardless of what the goal is. In modern business, the goal is profit; in the Holocaust, it was murder.

• Science + tech → railways transporting victims to the death camps, to the industrially produced gas used to kill them.

For Bauman, the Holocaust was the result not of a breakdown of civilisation, but of the very existence of modern rational-bureaucratic civilisation. The Holocaust was a modern, industrialised…

mass production 'factory' system, where the product was mass murder.

How can BAUMAN’S modernity be critiqued in regards to their explanations of state crime, particularly genocide?

• Not all genocides occur through a…

• The real motivation = …

• highly organised division of labour that allows participants to distance themselves from the killing. e.g Rwandan genocide was carried out directly by large marauding groups.

• significance of racist ideology e.g nazi ideas via anti-semitic prop rather than modern, rational division of labour, which have supplied the means for the Holocaust.

What is bringing pressure to bear on states? As a result, what does Cohen (2006) argues, states now have to do? How is this done in regards to democratic states?

• growing impact of the international human rights movement

• make a greater effort to conceal or justify their human rights crimes, or to re-label them as not crimes.

  • their justifications follow a three-stage 'spiral of state denial'

What is the 3-stage 'spiral of state denial':

• Stage 1 'It…

• Stage 2 'If…

• Stage 3 'Even…

  
  

• Stage 1 'It didn't happen'; e.g. state claims = no massacre. But then human rights organisations, victims and the media show it did happen: 'here are the graves; we have the photos. (initial concealment + reveal)

• Stage 2 'If it did happen, "it" is something else'; e.g. the state says it was self-defence, not murder. (using tech of neutral, second attempt of concealment)

• Stage 3 'Even if it is what you say it is, it's justified', e.g. to fight the 'war on terror'. (using tech of neutral, justification)

Techniques of neutralisation → Cohen examines the ways in which states deny or justify their crimes. He draws on the work of Sykes and Matza (1957), who identify five neutralisation techniques that delinquents use to justify their deviant behaviour. Cohen shows how states use the same techniques to justify human rights violations: (3/5)

• denial of…
  

• Denial of victim 'They exaggerate; they are terrorists; they are used to violence; look what they do to each other.

• Denial of injury 'We are the real victims, not them.' 

• Denial of responsibility 'I was only obeying orders, doing my duty.' This justification is often used by individual policemen, death camp guards etc.

What are the other 2 techs of neutralisation illustrated by COHEN? using contemp. Palestine

• c… →

• a… →

• Condemning the condemners 'They are condemning us only because of their anti-Semitism (Israeli version), their hostility to Islam (Arab version), their racism.

• Appeal to higher loyalty → Self-righteous justifications that claim = higher cause, e.g zionism

What does neutralisation techniques not deny? Rather, what do 'they seek to impose shown through the example, Cohen (2006) gives on the 'war on terror' normalising torture?

• that the event has occurred.

• a different construction of the event from what might appear to be the case

  • USA → publicly justify coercive interrogation practices ‘merely induced stress, not psych harm’, which Cohen describes as 'torture lite'.