8. Globalisation, green crime, human rights and state crimes

?
View mindmap
  • Globalisation, green crime, human rights and state crimes
    • Crime and globalisation
      • Globalisation= the increasing interconnectedness of societies through improved technology, communication and technology
      • The global criminal economy
        • HELD ET AL
          • There has been globalisation of crime
          • The same processes that have brought about the globalisation of legitimate activities have also brought about the spread of transnational organised crime
          • Globalisation creates new opportunities for crime, new means of committing crime and new offences
        • CASTELLS
          • There is now a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion p/a
          • Part of the reason for the scale of the global criminal economy is because of the demand for its products and services in the rich west
          • However, the global criminal economy could not function without a supply side
          • This criminal economy takes a number of forms:
            • Arms trafficking
            • Trafficking in nuclear materials
            • Smuggling of illegal immigrants
            • Trafficking in women and children
            • Sex tourism
            • Trafficking in body parts
            • Cyber-crimes
            • Green crimes
            • International terrorism
            • Smuggling of legal goods
            • Trafficking in cultural artefacts
            • Trafficking in endangered animals
            • The drugs trade
            • Money laundering
      • Global risk consciousness
        • Globalisation creates new insecurities and produces a new mentality of 'risk consciousness'
        • Much of our knowledge of risk comes from the media which often portrays an exaggerated views of the dangers we face
        • The media often creates moral panics by giving out distorted images of crime and deviance
        • One result of this is the intensification of social control at the national level
        • Another result of globalised risk is the increased attempts at international cooperation and control in the various 'wars' on terror, drugs and crime
      • Globalisation, capitalism and crime
        • TAYLOR
          • Globalisation has led to changes in the pattern and extent of crime
          • By giving free rein to market forces, globalisation has created greater inequality and rising crime
        • Globalisation has created crime at both ends of the social spectrum
        • Globalisation has allowed transnational corporations to switch manufacturing to low-wage countries, producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty
        • The lack of legitimate job opportunities destroys self-respect and drives the unemployed to look for illegitimate ones
        • Globalisation also creates criminal opportunities on a grand scale for elite groups
        • Globalisation has also led to new patterns of employment which have created new opportunities to crime
        • EVAL: Taylor's theory is useful in linking global trends in the capitalist economy to changes in the pattern of crime
      • Patterns of criminal organisation
        • Globalisation and de-industrialisation has created new criminal opportunities and patterns at a local level
        • HOBBS & DUNNINGHAM
          • The way crime is organised is linked to the economic changes brought by globalisation
          • It involves individuals with contacts acting as a 'hub' around which a loose-knit network forms, composed of others seeking opportunities and often linking legitimate and illegitimate activities
          • This contrasts with the large-scale, hierarchy 'Mafia-style' criminal organisations of the past
        • 'Glocal' organisation
          • These new forms of organisation sometimes have international links, especially with the drugs trade but crime is still rooted in its local context
          • HOBBS & DUNNINGHAM
            • Crime works as a 'glocal' system
            • That is, crime is still locally based but with global connections
            • Changes associated with globalisation have led to changes in patterns of crime
            • However, it is not clear that such patterns are new, nor that the older structures have disappeared
        • McMafia
          • GLENNY
          • This refers to the organisations that emerged in Russia and Eastern Europe following the fall of communism- itself a major factor in globalisation
          • She traces the origins of transnational organised crime to the break-up of the Soviet Union which coincided with the deregulation of global markets
          • The collapse of the communist state heralded a period of increased disorder
          • To protect their wealth, capitalists turned to the mafias
          • The new Russian Mafia's were purely economic organisations formed to pursue self-interest
          • With the assistance of these violent organisations the rich were able to find protection for their wealth and a means of moving it out of the country
          • The Russian Mafias were able to build links with criminal organisations in other parts of the world
    • Green crime
      • 'Global risk society' and the environment
        • Unlike the natural disasters of the past, the major risks we face today are of our own making
        • BECK
          • In today's late modern society we can now provide adequate resources for all
          • However, the massive increase in productivity and the technology that sustains it have created new 'manufactured risks'
          • Many of theses risks are global leading Beck to describe late modern society as 'global risk society'
      • Green criminology
        • But what if the pollution that causes global warming or acid rain is perfectly legal and no crime has been committed? Is this a matter for criminologists?
        • Traditional criminology has not been concerned with so called 'green crimes' since no law has been broken
        • Green criminology takes a more radical approach and starts from the notion of harm rather than criminlal law
          • This type of criminology is a form of transgressive criminology- it oversteps the boundaries of traditional criminology to include new issues
        • Nation-states and transnational corporations adopt what WHITE calls an anthropocentric or human-centred view of environmental harm. This view assumes that humans have a right ot dominat enature
        • Opposite to the anthropocentric view is the ecocentric view which sees humans and the environment as interdependent so that environmental harm hurts humans as well
          • Green criminology tends to take this ecocentric view
      • Types of green crimes
        • Primary crimes
          • Crimes that result directly from the destruction and degradation of the earths' resources
          • 1. Crimes of air pollution
          • 2. Crimes of deforestation
          • 3. Crimes of species decline and animal rights
          • 4. Crimes of water pollution
        • SOUTH's classification of green crimes
        • Secondary crimes
          • Crimes that grows out of the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters
          • 1. State violence against oppositional groups
          • 2. Hazardous waste and organised crime
      • EVAL
        • + It recognises the growing importance of environmental issues
        • - By focussing on the much broader concept of harms rather than simply on legally defined crimes, it is hard to define the boundaries
    • State crime
      • Marxists such as CHAMBLISS argues that we should investigate 'state-organised crime' as well as crimes of capitalism
      • GREEN & WARD
        • 'State crime is 'illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by or with the complicity of state agencies'
        • State crimes can include torture, genocide, war crimes, imprisonment without trial and assassination
      • McLAUGHLIN's 4 categories of state crime:
        • 1. Political crimes, e.g. corruption and censorship
        • 2. Crimes by security and police forces, e.g. genocide, torture
        • 3. Economic crimes, e.g. official violations of health and safety laws
        • 4. Social and cultural crimes such as institutional crimes
      • State crime is one of the most serious forms of crime for 2 reasons:
        • 1. The scale of state crime
          • The power of the state allows it to commit extremely large scale crimes with widespread victimisation
          • The state's monopoly of violence gives it the potential to inflict massive harm, while its power means it is well placed to conceal its crimes or evade punishment for them
          • The principle of national sovereignity- that states are the supreme authority within their own borders- makes it very difficult for external authorities to intervene
        • 2. The state is the source of the law
          • It is the states role to define what is criminal and to manage the CJS and prosecute the offenders
          • Its power to define criminality allows it to avoid defining its own harmful actions as criminal
          • State control of the CJS also means that ut can persecute its enemies
      • Human rights and state crime
        • There is no single agreed list of what constitutes human rights but most definitions include:
          • Natural rights, that people are regarded as having simply by virtue of existing
          • Civil rights, such as the right to vote, to privacy, to a fair trial or to educati0on
        • THE SCHWENDINGER'S
          • We should define crime in terms of the violation of basic human rights, rather than breaking of legal rules
          • States that disregard these human rights must be seen as criminal
        • In this view, the definition of crime is inevitably political
      • State crime and the culture of denial
        • Although COHEN criticises the SHWENDINGERS, he nevertheless sees the issue of human rights and state crime as increasingly central both to political debate and criminology as a result of 2 factors:
          • The growing impact of the international human rights movement
          • The increased focus within criminology upon victims
        • The spiral of denial
          • While dictatorships generally simply deny committing human rights abuses, democratic states have to legitimate their actions in more complex ways
          • Their justifications follow a 3-stage 'spiral of state denial':
            • 1. 'It didnt happen
            • 2. 'If it did happen, 'it' is something else'
            • 3. 'Even if it is what you say it is, it's justified'
        • COHEN
        • Neutralisation theory
          • He also examines the ways in which states and their officials deny or justify their crimes using SYKES & MATZA's 5 neutralisation techniques:
            • Denial of victim
            • Denial of injury
            • Denial of responsibility
            • Condemning the condemners
            • Appeal to higher loyalty
        • The social construction of state crime
          • It is often thought that those who carry out crimes like torture must be psychopaths yet research suggests that this is not the case
          • Sociologists argue that such actions are part of a role into which individuals are socialised
          • KELMAN & HAMILTON's 3 features that produce crimes of obedience
            • Authorisation, when acts are ordered or approved by those in authory
            • Routinisation, repeating the act until it can be performed in a detached manner
            • Dehumanisation, when the enemy is portrayed as sub-human
          • Some argue that modern society creates the conditions for such crime on a vast- scale
          • BAUMAN
            • For the Nazis to commit mass murder, many of the feautures of modernity were essesntial

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Sociology resources:

See all Sociology resources »See all Crime and deviance resources »