Globalisation

What is globalisation?

The increasing interconnectedness of societies; economically, culturally,politically and technologically which has occurred due to trade transport and technology

What does globalisation mean for crime?

It means that criminal activity now crosses national borders and local crime is shaped by global forces. Globalisation has enabled existing crimes as well as led to new types of crime emerging

What are some examples of global crime?

Cybercrime e.g. identity theft, online fraud, scams, hacking, dark web markets

Drug trafficking - cocaine heroin and cannabis are produced in developing countries which is then trafficked and distributed across continents

Human trafficking and smuggling - driven by demand for cheap labour, demand for work, persecution, war, ease of transportation arranged by trafficking gangs

Green/environmental crime e.g. illegal logging, pollution, toxic waste dumping, wildlife trafficking

What are the causes of the global criminal economy?

Global inequality

Supply and demand operations

Global transportation and trading

Technology transcends borders

Political conflict

Postmodernist Manuel Castells 1998

Argued globalisation has created a transnational criminal economy worth over £1 trillion annually. These crimes transcend national borders and make policing it very difficult

‘Glocal’ crime and Hobbs and Dunningham’s view on how globalisation has changed the organisation of crime.

Crime is shaped by global networks but carried out by local groups e.g. local drug dealers rely on global supply chains

These sociologists point out that traditionally organised crime was a gangster style top down hierarchy with family ties like Italian mafia whereas today organised crime is local but with more global connections meaning that they are now more loose, flexible networks with no clear hierarchy

Mcmafia (Misha Glenny)

Glenny uses the term McMafia to describe franchised corporate style criminal organisations that emerged after the fall of communism

Oligarchs are people from former Soviet states who quickly became very wealthy due to close connections to political leaders and so bought state assets cheaply. To protect their wealth and their security they needed to hide their dark money and launder it and so used criminal security teams for protection.

This led to a rise of serious organised global crime- or a McMafia

Ulrich Beck- risk society

Beck claims we are now confronting problems in society that previous generations didn’t have to e.g. climate change, terrorism, world conflict which has led to greater sense of risk, fear, danger and insecurity and that these problems are out of control

Marxist view of globalisation and crime

Ian Taylor argues globalisation has allowed capitalism to benefit through illegitimate activity in boosting their production and profit.

Transnational companies move their production to developing countries to exploit weaker tax laws, health and safety, and cheap labour costs.

This creates unemployment and inequality in more developed nations

It creates exploitation and crime in developed nations

e.g. Primark in China Bangladesh and India

Strengths

Explains new forms of crime e.g. cybercrime and green crime

Shows how local and global crime are connected

Criticisms

Overgeneralises globalisation and its impact on crime- many crimes are very local and not all countries are equally affected

Many of these crimes are not new