Globalisation and Crime

Held et al

Globalisation is “widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness”

Beck

technology creates risk society

threats to well being increasingly manmade rather than natural disasters, we’re more conscious of consequences of actions

Sklair

TNC bosses form a new/separate global capitalist class

Ohmae

borderless world where TNCs have more power than governments, states are unable to regulate capitalism

Lash and Urry

disorganised capitalism

globalisation accompanied by less regulation and state control over businesses and finance

International drugs trade

UN estimates that the international drugs trade business is worth around $321 billion each year, more than the GDP of 88% of the world’s countries.

Human trafficking

National Crime Agency 2014: 13000 people in Britain victims of modern slavery.

Detica

2011 estimates cyber crime costs UK £27 billion a year

Taylor

movement towards disorganised capitalism has led to fewer job opportunities in the UK because of labour being exported to global South, leading to an increase in unemployment, part-time and temporary jobs

globalisation has given free reign to market forces, creating greater inequality and rising crime

individuals are left to weigh the costs and benefits of their decisions and to choose the course that brings them the best chances of gaining the highest rewards, which people may choose to do illegally.

Lea and Young

relative deprivation increased by globalisation of culture, acts as a cause of crime

Bauman

late modernity characterised by growing individualisation - increase in repressive state apparatus and cuts to welfare state. Growing poverty and inequality pushes more people to crime.

Hobbs and Dunningham

in the past, criminal gangs were large-scale and hierarchical (EG Sicilian Mafia) but this tactic doesn’t work in a globalised economy:

• ‘Glocal’ (global + local) organisations → local criminal groups with global connections. More adaptable because tailor made to location. Changes to patterns in crime; loose networks of flexible, opportunistic, entrepreneurial criminals.

Glenny

McMafia

franchise model for organised crime (like McDonalds) EG Albanian mafia; criminal gangs calling themselves Albanian mafia despite not being Albanian and lacking hierarchy. Opportunities opened up by fall of Soviet Union due to ex-KGB etc losing jobs and moving into crime.

Bhopal Tragedy

1984

A chemical company plant leaked poisonous gas, affecting 500,000 million people. Poisoned groundwater - by 2012 there had been around 25,000 deaths and at least 120,000 people still suffering severe symptoms such as blindness and birth defects in children. Plant built by American company (Union Carbide, now Dow Chemicals) in India due to lighter regulations, company able to get away with it by fleeing back to America (short jail terms, paid small fine which was mostly taken by government and not spent on cleaning up Bhopal - $470m in 1989) - Indian government decided its not their problem. In 2023 India’s Supreme Court rejected calls for more compensation to victims.

Wolf

case studies have limited use in explaining and generalisations about the cause of green crime

South

PRIMARY: crimes that directly affect the environment.

Air pollution, water pollution, deforestation, animal crimes

SECONDARY: crimes connected to the environment that don’t directly affect it. → Committing a crime because of environmental concerns - environment is not harmed but is part of the reason why the crime is committed. Can come from ignoring rules regulating environment.

State crimes against protestors, hazardous waste and organised crime

Situ and Emmons

an unauthorised act or omission that violates the law should be considered green crime

White

Any act that harms the physical environment/humans/animals within it even if no laws have been broken should be considered green crime.

Green and Ward

262 million people murdered by the governments during the 20th century

Mclaughlin

Four types of state crime:

Political crimes; corruption and censorship → Dido Harding

Crimes by police and security forces → Bloody Sunday, Abu Ghraib

Economic crimes; violations of health and safety laws → Cait Reilly

Social and cultural crimes → police racism

Michalowski

state crimes should be defined by the amount of harm created not whether or not it breaks written laws

Rothe and Mullins

state crime is a crime that violates international law

Schwendinger and Schwendinger

state crime is anything which violates basic human rights

Kelman and Hamilton

state crimes happen as a result of conformity to rules put in place by violent states. Based on rape and mass murder of Vietnamese women by US army at My Lai

Authoritisation

Routinisation

Dehumanisation

Swann

enclaves of barbarism’ - places where violence is encouraged and the perpetrators of violence can then leave to return to normal life

Hannah Arendt

banality of evil → so normalised it becomes boring; alienation

Adorno

some people just have an authoritarian personality - both bullies and bootlickers → F scale test Fascist values = respect (for authority not for everyone), conventional attitudes, superstition, inflexible, contempt, submissiveness.

Sykes and Matza

Culture of denial:

1. Denial of the victim → “they were asking for it”

2. Denial of the injury → “doesn’t count”, “no big deal”

3. Denial of responsibility → “it wasn’t my fault”

4. Condemning the condemners → “you’ve done worse than me”

5. Appealing to higher loyalties → “I had to because”

Cohen

the state goes to effort to conceal/justify/relabel their crimes as not crimes, EG Israel

Bauman

features of modernity made the Holocaust possible:

1. A division of labour: no personal responsibility towards the atrocity because people had small parts.

2. Bureaucratisation: normalised the killing by making it repetitive and routine.

3. Instrumental rationality: rational, efficient methods were used to achieve a goal - people become numbers.

4. Science and technology: technology made it much easier to do on a mass industrial scale.

Nations inherently lead to racism.

Modernity =/= progress. As we move into post-modernity (which Bauman calls liquid modernity), makes things like this less likely.