Green crime and Globalisation

What is Green Crime?

Refers to crimes that harm the environment, whether directly or indirectly. It is a growing area of sociological study due to increasing awareness of environmental issues.

How does Green Criminology differ from traditional criminology?

Traditional criminology focuses on acts that violate formal laws. Green criminology expands this to include actions that cause environmental harm, even if they are not illegal.

What is the Green Radical View?

Argues that all species have a right to exist and that environmental destruction is a crime against these rights, regardless of legality.

What are some examples of green crime?

Actions that cause environmental damage in pursuit of profit, such as illegal logging, polluting activities by corporations, and the dumping of toxic waste.

Primary green crimes

• Destruction and degradation of earth’s resources.

• Air pollution

• Deforestation

• Special decline and animal abuse

• Water pollution

Secondary green crimes

• rules aimed to prevent or regulate environmental disasters:

• State violence against oppositional groups

• Hazardous waste and organised crime

• Environmental discrimination

Globalisation

Globalisation has allowed transactional organised crime to flourish-for instance, the trafficking of arms, drugs and people. We now live in a global risk society where human- made threats include large environmental damage. Green criminology adopts an ecocentric view based on harm rather than the law, and identified both primary and secondary green crimes. The state also contributes to green crime through the exploitation of health and safety laws, for example.

Castles:

• As a result of globalisation there is a global criminal economy worth over 1 trillion per annum:

• Trafficking of arms, women, children, body parts, cultural artefacts, nuclear materials and endangered species, smuggling ilegal immigrants, sex tourism.

Taylor

• Globalisation has created crimes at both ends of the spectrum; it has allowed transnational corporations to switch manufacturing to low-wage countries, providing job-insecurity, unemployment and poverty.

• Globalisation has also created inequality, leading to the increase in crime due to resentment and material deprivation.

Glenn’s

• McMafia- the organisations that emerged in Russia following the fall of communism. Glenny traces the origins of transnational organised crime to the break up of the Soviet Union which coincided with the deregulation of global markets.

State crime

• Crime is a social construct and such as varies from state to state

• Many state crime are legal in that nation at the time they are committed.

• Can be defined by actions taken by the state or its agent against its own citizens that break national or international law

• Sociologist argue we should look at acts that violate an individuals human rights- regardless of whether a nation considers the act to be legal.

Mc Laughlin

• Political criminality

• Crimes of state security or police

• Economic crimes

• Criminality at social and cultural levels

Political criminality

• Corruption and censorship of dissenting voices are examples of political criminality.

• Forms of clientism, where the government places the needs fo corporations another the welfare of their citizens are forms of state crime.

• Awards of PPE contracts during the covid 19 pandemic have been under scrutiny and linked to Conservative Party donors- other contracts awarded without parliamentary scrutiny.

State and police crimes

• Crimes against the public by the agents of the security forces, armed forces and the police.

• Includes violence and deaths in custody, unlawful imprisonment, unlawful killing by state operatives, persecution of groups in society and genocide.

• Includes torture of prisoners- UK and USA have been complicit in torture of terrorism suspects during “war on terror”

Economic crimes

• Rise of state corporate crime with the increased privatisation of services.

• Gov subcontract activities to private companies who act on the behalf of state sector, yet deviate from law.

• Gov remains liable for the action of their contractors, yet often chooses to legitimise the actions of these companies.

Crime at social and cultural levels

• Crimes of discrimination against one or more groups in society

• Eastern Europeans actively oppress the rights of LGBT communities in their nation

• African and Middle Eastern nations have strict laws surrounding sexuality and the conduct of different genders.

• Historic segregation of different ethnic groups

Evaluation

Defining legal activities in one nation as being state crime can be seen as the imposition of western values- crime is a construction

Crimes of state often legitimised based upon the need for action

Influence of religious beliefs in some forms of discrimination is seen as an appeal to a higher power.

Authoritarian personality

• Researching the holocaust suggested that state crimes were possible due to the presence of authoritarian personalities

• Willingness to obey superiors regardless of the morality of the act

• Large scale acts of genocide in Cambodia, japan, Ukraine and Soviet Union.

Obedience

Many large scale state crimes such as genocide rely upon the obedience of those ordered to commit acts.

Denial

Cohen- suggested that states often look to hide or legitimise their actions- spiral of state denial

• Stage 1- denial of the crime

• Stage 2- suggestion that it isn’t a crime

• Stage 3- Justification of actions.