State CrimesState Crimes

Exam Question• In today's society we learn about crime and deviance

largely from the mass media. Unfortunately however the image we are given is often an inaccurate one. While we expect fictional portrayals of crime- in films, on TV, in novels and so on- not to be an accurate representation, many sociologists argue that the image presented via the news media also distorts the reality of crime.

• Using material from Item B and elsewhere, assess sociological explanations of media representations of crime and their effects (21 marks)

Learning Objectives:

• To understand what is meant by state crimes• To be aware of examples of state crimes• To appreciate why state crimes are so serious• To investigate human rights as an illustration

of state crime• Understand the different types of green crime• Be able to evaluate sociological explanations

of environmental harm

Last Lesson Recap• What is Globalisation?• The global criminal economy has created an

increase in certain crimes, what examples are there?• How is Globalisation linked to Marxism and Crime?• Patterns of Criminal Organisation are said to have

changed due to Globalisation, the two changes are ‘Glocal’ Organisation and McMafia explain the two

What are state crimes?

State crime is ….‘illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies’

(Green & Ward, 2005)

state organised crime

Chambliss

State crimes are committed by, or on behalf of states and governments in order

to further their policies• Genocide• War crimes• Torture• Imprisonment without trial• Assassination

It doesn’t include acts that benefit individuals who work for the state (e.g. policeman who takes bribes)

McLaughlin identifies 4 categories of state crime:

• Political crimes – e.g. corruption or censorship• Crimes by security – genocide, torture and

disappearance of dissidents• Economic crimes – e.g. violation of health and

safety laws• Social and Cultural Crimes – e.g. institutional

racism

What examples can you think of?

Example of State crimes Genocide

Terrorism

Police Corruption

Torture

Israel attack on Gaza strip

Use of white phosphorous

Outside a UN school

Below the UN school

Guantanamo Bay -USA

Torture in Iraq

US forces in Iraq

• R. J. Rummel calculated that from 1900 to 1987 over 169 million people had been murdered by governments.

• This figure excludes deaths in wars (about 35 million, some of them war crimes)

Cambodia – Pol Pot

Nazi Germany

Vietnam War - Napalm

Scale of State Crime

The state’s power enables it to commit large scale crimes with widespread victimisation e.g. in Cambodia between 1975 and 1978, the Khmer Rouge government killed up to a fifth of the country's entire population

“Great power and great crimes are inseparable.” (Michalowski & Kramer, 2006

Scale of State Crime

• The state’s power means it can conceal its crimes or evade punishment more easily

• Principle of National Sovereignty makes it difficult for external authorities (e.g. UN) to intervene or apply international conventions against genocide, war crimes etc

• Media focuses on state crimes in 3rd world countries – but avoids reporting on such crimes in UK and USA.

What link to

Marxism

The state is the source of law

State’s role is to define what is criminal. They manage the criminal justice process and prosecute offenders.

State crime can undermine the system of justice…’above the law’.

It’s power to make the law means that it can avoid its own harmful actions being defined as criminal e.g. Nazi Germany sterilising disabled people

It can also use the criminal justice system to control and persecute it’s enemies.

Human Rights & State Crime• State crime can be examined through the notion of

human rights.• There is no agreed list of human rights most

definitions include natural rights e.g. right to life & liberty, and civil rights e.g. right to vote, fair trial, education

• A right is an entitlement and acts as a protection against the power of the state over an individual

• Right to fair trial means the state cannot imprison a person without due process of law

How can states violate human rights. (include arguments from Schwendlingers and

Cohen)

Crime as the violation of human rights• Critical Criminologists (Schwendinger) argue that we

should define crime in terms of the violation of basic human rights, rather than the breaking of legal rules. States that deny individuals human rights must be regarded as criminal

• States that practice imperialism, racism or sexism, or inflict economic exploitation on their citizens are committing crimes

• The state can be seen as a perpetrator of crime and not simply as the authority that defines and punishes crime

State crime in Iraq• Saddham Hussein concentrated power

in a small circle of relatives and cronies. The loyalty of security services was secured by material benefits and blackmail rather than ideological belief.

• During Hussein’s regime, torture, extra-judicial executions, inhuman punishments, war crimes and genocide were rife, and accepted at the highest levels of government despite Iraq being a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Torture in Iraq

• Mass executions of Shi’ite Arabs (some involved in the 1991 uprising) took place at Abu Graib and Al Radwaniyah prisons in 1993. Some members of Saddam’s ruling family had their own private torture chambers, employing eye gouging, piercing of hands by drills, rape, acid baths, amputation of ears, branding of foreheads etc. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shias are said to have disappeared.

Torture

Torture is a form ofstate crime perpetuatedin every known nation, ifthe term is interpretedto include mental aswell as physicalsuffering imposed bystate officials to obtaininformation.

Abuse of women in Darfur

• Darfuri women, after an assault on their village, are systematically raped, taken into captivity, and sold or given into sexual slavery. They can be held as slaves for a week, often repeatedly gang raped by militiamen and soldiers, or they can be married off under coercive marriage laws to friends of the Sudanese Armed Forces as far away as Khartoum.

Child abuse in Darfur• Children are often recruited as agricultural workers and sex

workers and as domestic workers in Khartoum. According to both the UN and Human Rights Watch, all armed parties in Darfur, including the rebels, were involved in recruiting child soldiers.

• "In Darfur, the Government of Sudan has not only failed in its

responsibility to protect its own citizens from human rights violations, but it also bears a direct responsibility for many of the abuses which have taken place.“

• http://www.standnow.org/blog/slavery-darfur-report-darfur-consortium

Ethnic cleansing

• Non-Arab civilians are targeted for attack and abduction by government-supported Janjaweed militias and the Sudanese Army based on their belonging to this perceived ethnic group. The abduction and enslavement is systematic and government-sanctioned – and therefore an act of ethnic cleansing.

Zimbabwe today• A dictator is able to impose his or

her will on a nation when a number of factors apply. Institutions that should act as a countervailing force to the dictator’s power are either crippled or completely destroyed. In some cases they become an extension of the despot’s rule.

• People are murdered, tortured, and abducted to instil fear in others.

Rwandan genocide• Between April and June 1994, an

estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed. Most of the dead were Tutsis, a scapegoated group, and most of the perpetrators were Hutus. Longstanding tension between these two groups was brought to a head when the Tutsis were blamed for a plane crash in which the president died. The presidential guard immediately initiated a campaign of retribution.

• The early organisers included military officials, politicians and businessmen, encouraged by radio propaganda. Soldiers and police officers encouraged ordinary citizens to take part. In some cases, Hutu civilians were forced to murder their Tutsi neighbours by military personnel.

• Some Tutsis managed to escape to refugee camps

Examples of Corruption reducing human rights

• Survey in Uganda found one in ten children had to pay for primary education which is supposedly free (UN 2000)

• Russian study found 12 million people lack necessary healthcare because cannot afford to bribe doctors.

• Japan is exceptional in that urban voters have to pay for things that rural poor are given free. Extortion is aimed at the wealth only. (Bouissou 1997)

State Crime and the culture of denial

1. Read through page 134 and 135 2. Summarise what you have read3. Neutralisation techniques and conflict in Gaz

a activity

Green Crimes and the State

• Green or environmental crime can be defined as crime against the environment.

• A lot of it can be linked to globalisation and the increasing interconnectedness of societies e.g. atmospheric pollution from industry in one country can turn into acid rain that falls in another poisoning its watercourses and destroying its forests

• Problems caused in one locality can have worldwide effects (Chernobyl disaster spread radioactive material over thousands of miles)

‘Global Risk Society’ and the Environment

• Most threats to human well being and the eco-system are now human-made rather than natural disasters

• The massive increase in productivity and technology has created new ‘manufactured’ risks

• Many of these risk involve harm to the environment and have serious consequences for humanity e.g. climate change/global warming

• The risks are increasingly on a global scale rather than local in nature, leading to late modern society as ‘global risk society’

Green Criminology

• When pollution that causes global warming is legal, Is it a matter for criminologists?

• Traditional Criminology says No & Green Criminology says Yes

• Traditional Criminology- studies the patterns and causes of law breaking (however criticised for accepting official definitions of environmental problems and crimes often shaped by powerful groups to serve their own interests) – in the above case no law has been broken

• Green Criminology- looks at the notion of harm rather than criminal law. White (2008) criminology is any action that harms the physical environment &/or the human and non-human animals within it, even if no law has been broken

• Many of the worst environmental harms are not illegal• It’s a form of transgressive criminology – oversteps the

boundaries of traditional criminology to include new issues

• Laws also differ from state to state (may be a crime in one country and not another)

• Therefore by moving away from a legal definition green criminology can develop a global perspective on environmental harm

Two views of harm

• Nation states and TNC’s apply an anthropocentic (human centred) view of environmental crime. Humans have a right to dominate nature for their own ends, putting economic growth before the environment

• Green Criminology takes an ecocentric view that sees humans and their environment as interdependent, so that environmental harm hurts humans also

Types of Green Crimes

• There are two types of green crime: primary and secondary

• Primary green crimes are crimes that results directly from the destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources

• Secondary green crime is crime that grows out of the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters e.g. Governments often break their own regulations and cause environmental harms

Activity- page 130

1. What are the four examples of primary green crime?

2. What are the two examples of secondary green crimes?

Evaluation• Strengths and Weaknesses of green criminology arise

from its focus on global environmental concerns• It recognises the growing importance of

environmental issues and the need to address the harms and risks of environmental damage, both to humans and non-human animals

• However by focusing on much broader concept of harms rather than on legally defined crimes its hard to define the boundaries of its field of study clearly

• Defining the boundaries involves making moral or political statements about which actions ought to be regarded as wrong.

State Responsibility for Green Crimes

• So called natural disasters are often made worse when societies are so unequal that poorer people are forced to live on areas of land that are prone to landslide or flooding.

• Building regulations may be flouted on a wide scale and as a result if clientelism, so many lives are lost in earthquake zones.

New Orleans

1. Is this a stateor individualcrime?

2. How does thislink to green crime?

3. How does this linkto theory?

Naples

PlenaryWith a partner, look at the following picture of state and green crime. Then discuss the following questions....

•Which picture shows green crime and state crime.•Why is it green or state crime?•Is it a crime in your opinion?

•Why is it difficult to tackle such crimes?

Environmental/ Green crime

Key ideas

Defined as crimes against the environment such as toxic waste dumping and deforestation. Green crime is linked with globalisation as the world is one single eco-system. Ulrich Beck reminds us that many environmental issues are manufactured rather than natural.

Traditional criminology

If pollution that causes global warming is legal and no real crime has been committed then traditional criminology is not interested.

Green criminology

Less bound by laws but by harm caused to the environment or people. Green criminology is a much wider field and so called Transgressive Criminology – goes beyond traditional criminology.

Harm

Anthropocentric is a human centred approach which assumes humans have the right to dominate nature for their own ends. The Ecocentric view sees humans and their environment as interdependent, so harming one is harming another. Green criminology takes the ecocentric approach.

Primary crimes

Crimes that result directly from the destruction of the earth:-

Crimes of air pollution.

Crimes of deforestation.

Crimes of species decline and animal rights.

Crimes of water pollution.

Secondary crimes

Crimes that result from flouting rules aimed at preventing an environmental disaster.

State violence against oppositional groups – despite opposing terrorism states have used the method themselves.

Hazardous waste and organised crime –illegal dumping.

Human rights

Human rights

The right to life, liberty and free speech.

Civil rights

The right to vote, to privacy, fair trial and education.

Problem

States create laws which make their actions legal and free them from criminal charges.

Solution

Herman and Schwendinger (1970) argue we should define crime as a violation of human rights rather than law breaking. States that deny humans their rights are then seen as criminals. This new approach has been called Transgressive criminology as it transgresses (goes beyond) the traditional boundaries of criminology (criminal law).

New problem

Not everybody agrees on human rights. Is freedom from poverty a human right? Could states be charged as criminals for not making its members wealthy?

Stanley Cohen – The spiral of state denial (1996)

Three ways dictators deny human rights violations:-

Stage 1: ‘It didn’t happen’, this works until the media uncover evidence that it did.

Stage 2: ‘If it did happen, it is something else’.

Stage 3: ‘Even if it is what you say it is, its justified’ we had to do it.

The social conditions of state crimes

Three features which produces state crimes:-

Authorisation – obedience.

Routinisation – pressure to continue.

Dehumanisation – Enemy is a monster.

State crimes

Definition

Crimes or deviant activities perpetrated by or with permission of state agencies.

Examples:-

Genocide (deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, national or religious group).War crimesTortureImprisonment without trialAssassination

Eugene McLaughlin (2001)

Four types of state crime:- Political crimes - corruption

or censorship (controlling what the media says).

Crimes by security and police forces – Genocide and torture.

Economic crime - violations of health and safety.

Social and cultural crimes - institutional racism.

Case studies

Pol Pot – Leader of the Communist party in Cambodia. Slave labour, malnutrition, poor medical care resulted in the death of 21% of the population (1.7 -2.5M).

The problem of national sovereignty States are the supreme authority within their borders. The problem is the state is the source of law meaning it decides what crimes are, manages the criminal justice system and prosecutes offenders, meaning it can evade its own law.

Abu Ghraib

A prison in BaghdadControlled by US led coalition forces.Accusations of abuse in 2004 – 11 soldiers charge and convicted for mistreatment.

Nazi GermanyHitler started the T4 – euthanasia program from 1939 – 1941.275,000 terminally ill and mental patients were killed.