Globalisation and Crime

Globalisation

• An ongoing process involving interconnected changes in economic, cultural, social, and political spheres.

• Involves increasing integration between nations, regions, communities, and isolated places.

• Held: Globalisation of crime is the growing interconnectedness of crime across national borders, sometimes referred to as transnational organised crime.

• Castells: There is a global criminal economy of over £1 trillion per annum.

Evaluation of Globalisation of Crime

• Strengths:

  • Valuable: Focuses on the newest, most dramatic, and serious crimes.

  • Has led to more connectedness between law enforcement agencies worldwide.

• Weaknesses:

  • Difficult to investigate due to the secretive and global nature.

  • Dependency on secondary sources and reliable statistics is not available; primary research can be dangerous.

  • Easily exaggerated in terms of impact.

Globalisation and New Types of Crime

Drugs Trade

• The global drugs trade is now worth over $300 billion per year.

• Drugs are often cultivated in third-world countries (e.g., Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan) with impoverished populations.

  • Drugs are an attractive trade as they require little investment but command high prices, especially in the Western world.

Human Trafficking

• Includes trafficking of women, children, illegal immigrants, and human body parts.

  • Estimated that over 2000 organs per year are trafficked from condemned or executed criminals.

  • Women and children are often trafficked for the sex trade or slavery.

  • Estimated that over half a million people are trafficked to Western Europe annually.

Financial Crimes

• Money laundering has become much easier with the relaxation of international banking laws.

  • People are able to move money between offshore accounts more easily, or to have countries where national laws do not allow law enforcement access to accounts.

Cyber Crime

• Developed out of the growth in technology, taking various forms:

  • Cyber fraud

  • Cyber theft

  • Cyber terrorism

  • Cyber violence

• It is a transnational crime as the hacker can be in one country whilst hacking a system in another country

Transnational Organised Crime

• Growth in organised crime networks based on economic links.

  • Glenny calls these ‘McMafia’, developed from the deregulation of global markets and the fall of the Soviet Union.

  • Old school mafias, such as the Italian mafia and the triads, began to disperse around the world, especially in places like the USA.

Terrorism

• Technology and communication advancements have made international terrorism easier.

  • Groups can communicate with members all over the world.

  • Cultivate in-state members through online radicalisation.

Impact of Globalisation

Individualism

• Bauman: Growing individualism and consumer culture.

  • Individuals are left to weigh the costs and benefits of their decisions and choose the best course to bring them the highest rewards.

  • This can lead to people taking part in criminal activity in order to achieve the consumer lifestyle which is otherwise unobtainable.

Opportunities

• Growing globalisation, technological advancements, and communications have led to newer types of crime and new ways to carry out crime.

  • The Dark Web allows criminals to communicate and conduct crimes while remaining undetected.

  • Crimes can be committed in one nation while the criminal is in a different country.

Disorganised Capitalism

• Lash and Urry: Increased deregulation and fewer state controls over business and finance.

  • Corporations now act transnationally, moving money, manufacturing, waste disposal, and staff around the world to increase profits and lower regulation.

  • Taylor: This has led to greater job insecurity, less social cohesion, and fewer job opportunities in the West, which can increase crime rates.

Risk Society

• Beck: Growing instability in the globalised world has led to people being more risk-conscious.

  • The causes of the risks are often global in nature, which can make it hard to pinpoint who is responsible.

  • The media can play on this fear.

  • These fears can lead to hate crimes and racially motivated crimes.

Problems with policing

• Due to crimes becoming transnational, it requires cooperation between many different law enforcement agencies to bring the criminals to justice.

  • Additionally, what may be illegal in one country is not in another, and if the criminal is in one country and the victim in another, it can be difficult to determine jurisdiction.

More Inequality

• Taylor: Globalisation creates new patterns of inequality.

  • The winners from the process are the rich financial investors and transnational corporations.

  • The losers are the workers.

  • The disadvantaged in both the developing and developed world face greater insecurity and greater relative deprivation, which then feeds criminal behaviour.