Week 2 Lecture – Defining Criminology & Introduction to State Crime

Administrative & House-Keeping

• Lecturer begins by gauging students’ feelings; acknowledges “chuckles & hands up” = positive mood.
• Thanks students for submitting Reflection 1; all papers showed $0\%$ Turnitin similarity → praised as model for assessment writing.
• Marker excited to read authentic student thinking; expects growth by Reflection 2 (one question may change).
• Technical notice: Students having trouble typing in Teams must log in directly to Microsoft 365 via the institutional landing page (drop-down → Microsoft 365).
  • Moodle login ≠ full Teams permissions.
  • Using the Teams desktop/app may still be glitchy but Microsoft 365 login path is key.
• Request to mute mics to avoid feedback.
• Slides will normally be posted before class (apology for delay). Slides for Week 2 uploaded after lecture.
• Marking timeline: 2–3 weeks for large tasks; shorter items (e.g.
  Reflection 1) targeted by Friday after portal closes (5 p.m. today).
• Reading-Engagement Tool: Setting tweaked so marks now visible instantly; two high-quality comments + reading to end earns the full $1\%$.

Lecture Agenda Overview

• Define criminology (discipline scope, competing definitions).
• Recap last week’s critique of legalistic crime lens → microscope analogy: legal lens shows only state-defined crime, social-harm lens widens field.
• Introduce & interrogate state crime.
• Provide “briefest of histories” to show why definitions look the way they do.
• Use Mentimeter polls to surface student assumptions.

Student Reflection Feedback

• Majority defined criminology as “scientific study of crime & criminals”.
• Lecturer: not wrong, but common trend worth unpacking; reveals positivist legacy.
• Poll confirms this was most frequent student answer.

Technical Access Tip (Microsoft 365 & Teams)

• Logging through Microsoft 365 grants full Teams chat rights; different authentication thread from Moodle.

Defining Criminology: Historical Foundations

• Term ‘criminology’ first coined $1885$ by Italian scholar R. Garofalo.
• Emerged from the Italian (positivist) school alongside Lombroso & Ferri.
• Positivism (c. 1800s → 1960s) dominant orientation; emphasised measuring “facts”, empiricism, biology, pathology.
• Earlier Classical school (Beccaria, Bentham, 1700s): free will, deterrence, rational choice.
• Eurocentric trajectory: non-Western & Indigenous systems (e.g.
  Tikanga Māori) historically marginalised.

Positivism: Key Features & Legacy

• Crime & criminal rendered objective, discrete, measurable categories.
• Criminality located within individual (biological or sociological deficits).
  • Example: Lombroso’s “stigmata” (jaw, forehead) → scientific racism.
• Positivist hangover: Newspapers, textbooks, Google definition = “scientific study of crime & criminals.”
• Contemporary echoes: $2017$ headline claimed “MRI scans find criminal intent”.
• Consequence: Criminology became an arm of the state – it validates and reproduces legal definitions; data collection shaped by what is already criminalised.

Critiques & Evolution: Emergence of Radical & Critical Criminologies

• Late 1960s–70s: challenged positivist objectivism; questioned power, politics, law-making.
• Michalowski & others argue orthodox criminology helps maintain existing inequalities.

Interactive Poll Insights (Mentimeter)

1. Positivist + empiricism = assumes objective reality of crime (majority correct).
2. Students brainstormed what happens to state crime when focus is only on street crime → ignored, hidden, under-researched (word cloud captured).

Defining Criminology: Working Definitions

1. Orthodox: “Scientific study of crime & criminals.”
   • Strength: familiar, concise.
   • Limits: reifies state definitions, blinds social harm.
2. Sutherland, Cressey & Luckenbill (eclectic):
   “Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes the processes of making laws, breaking laws, and reacting toward the breaking of laws.”
   • Encompasses positivist, radical & critical views.
3. Michalowski’s inversion: Study the “problem of crime” (processes by which troubles are criminalised / not) rather than the “crime problem” (already-labelled offenses).

Criminology’s Relation to the State

• When research sticks to legal categories, criminology:
  • Explains & helps solve the state’s crime problem.
  • Works on corrections, police, situational prevention, recidivism.
  • Ignores broader harms (environmental, corporate, governmental).
• Typical courts & prisons filled with low-income, racialised offenders → reinforces social inequality.

Approaches in Criminology (Three Streams)

1. Biological / Psychological (internal deficits) – positivism.
2. Social / Structural (external forces) – still offender-centred.
3. Power / Criminalisation processes – critical & radical; why some harms are not crimes.

The Problem of Crime vs. The Crime Problem

• Inverting terms widens lens to see:
  • Legal vs. extra-legal harms.
  • How power designates some injuries as “normal”.
  • Unequal enforcement & selective surveillance.

State Crime: Conceptual Frameworks

• Orthodox public image of crime = murder, rape, burglary, drugs.
• Critical criminologists argue meaning is more complicated; state actions can be criminal/harmful though legal.
• Polling recap: Attention tilted toward least widespread, least harmful injuries (street crime) rather than mass harms.

Three Analytic Lenses for State Crime

1. Juridical (Legalistic) – violations of national/international law or treaties.
   • E.g.
   Nuremberg trials; ICC indictments.
2. Organisational Deviance (Consensus/Deviance model) – harmful acts by state that breach majority’s norms & attract public sanction.
   • Problem: propaganda & ideology can manufacture consent.
3. Social Injury / Harm model – actions causing injuries as grave as crime, regardless of legality or intent (structural violence).

Michalowski’s State Crime “Wedding Cake”

• Top tier: War crimes, genocide, terrorism (explicit, often illegal).
• Middle tier: Semi-tolerated war-related deaths, brutal punishments.
• Bottom tier: Structural violence → preventable poverty, workplace hazards, environmental destruction, racism, sexism, neo-colonial extraction.
  • Widest victim pool yet least studied.

What is “The State” in Criminological Analysis?

• Not merely individual office-holders; rather institutionalised processes & power relations shaping economic, political, cultural order.
• Harm often embedded in routine policies, not rogue actors → demands structural (not purely individual) responses.
• Many state crimes fall outside domestic & international jurisdiction; no “pants to kick or soul to damn.”

Case Studies & Examples

United States as Empire

• Ida-Cola: Largest, most powerful, violent “criminal organisation” today.
• Wars of aggression violate UN Charter Art.
  $2(4)$; U.S. repeatedly invades or sponsors conflicts (e.g.
  Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, multiple Middle-East wars).
• Example policy: Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” cutting Medicare & food assistance → estimated $51\,000$ preventable deaths per year.
• U.S. removed itself from ICC jurisdiction after Nicaragua sued USA (1984) for mining its harbours (ICJ ruled against U.S.).
• Guantánamo Bay detentions: Amnesty calls violations; Bush & Obama claimed compliance—shows contested interpretations.

Israel–Palestine Conflict

• ICJ (July $2024$): Israeli presence in Occupied Territories unlawful, must end “as rapidly as possible.”
• ICC warrants for PM Netanyahu – charges: starvation as warfare, attacks on civilians, persecution, murder ($10/08/2023 \rightarrow 20/05/2024$).
• Current genocide metrics:
  • $650\,000$ children risk famine; $2\,000\,000$ Gazans trapped since 2007 blockade.
  • Plan to relocate $600\,000$ to a $64\ \text{km}^2$ camp (smaller than Disney World) = crime against humanity.
  • Historical context: $750\,000$ Palestinians expelled during 1948 Nakba, $300\,000$ more in 1967 Six-Day War.
  • Green colonialism: forests planted over 6 destroyed villages to block return.
• UN ceasefire resolutions blocked by U.S. veto—illustrates geopolitical power over law.

Homelessness & Structural Violence (Aotearoa example)

• Criminalising rough sleeping (trespass, beat cops) ignores policy roots: lack of affordable housing.
• If housing recognised as fundamental right, crimes “by & against” homeless people would decrease.

Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (Australia)

• Hazelhurst links crimes against Aboriginal peoples to state policing & carceral practices.
• Royal Commission findings criticised for obscuring unnecessary imprisonment.

Implications for Criminological Inquiry

• Expanding focus reveals:
  • Larger scales of victimisation often legal or normalised.
  • Need to study how policy, capitalism, colonialism inflict injury.
  • Encourages structural remedies (resource redistribution, institutional reform) over solely individual punishment.
• Social-injury lens does not dismiss street crime; it insists on proportional attention to broader harms.

Upcoming Assessments & Deadlines

• Reflection 1 due today 5 p.m.
  • Marks targeted by Friday.
• Reading Engagement each week: open Mon 8 a.m. – Sun 5 p.m.; 2 insightful comments + finish reading = $1\%$.
  • Some technical bugs with “read to end”; lecturer investigating; may drop metric if unresolved.
• Quiz 1 opens Week 3, 5 p.m.; covers Weeks 1–3.
  • $30$ MCQs (10 per week) • $30$ min • one-week window.
• Slides will be uploaded earlier going forward.

Ethical & Philosophical Takeaways

• Legal definitions are politically produced; harm can be lawful.
• Criminology faces choice: act as “arm of the state” or interrogate state itself.
• Wicked-problem nature of empire: Superpowers can veto UN action or exit ICC; nevertheless, documenting harm is vital to resistance, policy change, and historical record.
• Social-harm perspective aligns with Indigenous restorative traditions (e.g., Tikanga Māori) that privilege collective wellbeing over punitive individualism (to be explored in later lectures).