State Crime Flashcards
What are state crimes?…
State crimes are crimes committed by governments. They were defined by Penny Green and Tony Ward (2005) as “illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with, the complicity of state agencies”.
Of course, states generally create the laws of their countries and while governments may break their own laws, it is more likely the case that they are breaking international law; or their actions should be seen in terms of transgressive criminology (causing harm rather than breaking the law). A wide range of state crimes may be considered.
McLaughlin’s 4 types of state crime…
Eugene McLaughlin (2001) divided these into four types of state crime:
1) Crimes by security and police forces
2) Economic crimes
3) Social and cultural crimes (i.e. institutionalised racism)
4) Political crimes (i.e. corruption)
Examples of state crimes…
> Corruption
> Discrimination
> Funding terrorism
> Funding organised crime
> War crimes
> Torture
> Assassination
> Genocide
Natural Rights vs Civil Rights…
A right is defined as an entitlement to something; as such it acts as a protection against the power of the state over an individual. For example the right to a fair trial means that a government cannot imprison a person without the due process of law.
Natural Rights – Rights that people have simply by virtue of existing, such as the right to life, liberty and free speech.
Civil Rights – The right to vote, to privacy, to a fair trial or to an education.
State crimes breaking human rights…
Herman and Julia Schwendinger (1970) say that we should define crime as that which violate basic human rights rather than law breaking. Therefore states which don’t regard human rights are criminals. But their view is a little different, they say that any state that practices imperialism, racism, sexism, or inflicts economic exploitation on their citizens are committing crimes.
Schwendiger’s object to the idea that someone who steals a small sum of money is considered a criminal however agents of the state reward someone who destroys food in order to maintain food prices and yet a sizeable portion of the populace is suffering from malnutrition and poverty.
Stanley Cohen…
Stanley Cohen criticises this because human rights violations like war crimes and torture are obvious, but other acts like economic exploitation are not illegal, just morally wrong.
State crime and the culture of denial…
Stanley Cohen argues that states conceal and legitimate their human rights crimes. He says this because human rights and state crime are increasingly central to both political debate and criminology because of the impact of the human rights movements like Amnesty international an increased focus on victims.
Cohen’s ‘spiral of denial’…
Cohen argues that depending on the type of state system governments will utilise different methods to legitimise and conceal their human rights crimes.
Dictatorships (such as Iraq under Saddam Hussain) will simply deny that the abuses are happening, however democratic states have to use far more complex ways to justify the abuses, and in doing so tend to follow a three step process which Cohen referred to as the “Spiral of Denial“.
The spiral of denial…
“It didn’t happen” – Flat out denial of the violation despite the media, human rights organisations and victims having proof that it did happen. e.g. photographs of mass graves.
“If it did happen then it was something else” – State explains it away as something else. e.g. photographs of mass graves are explained by saying that is was self defence or collateral damage.
“if it is what you say it is, it is justified” – for example to protect national security or the fight against the war on terror.
The 5 steps…
Denial of the Victim – e.g. They are terrorists, they are used to violence, look at what they do to each other.
Denial of the injury – e.g. They started it, we were only defending ourselves, we are the real victims.
Denial of responsibility – e.g. I was only obeying orders, I was just doing my duty.
Condemning the Condemners – e.g. Everyone is picking on us, there are worse things going on in the world, They are racists, Anti Semitics, Islamaphobes etc.
Appeal to higher loyalty – e.g. self righteous justification.
Social conditions of the state…
Despite the belief that those who carry out this atrocities must be psychopaths there is evidence that there is little that differentiates us at all and it is the situation that leads them to commit these crimes. Kelman and Hamilton (1989) studied ‘crimes of obedience’ and found 3 features that produce these crimes:
Authorisation; when acts are approved by a form of authority – Milgram’s study of obedience.
Routinisation; if its a routine people can commit it in a detached manor.
Dehumanisation; when the enemy is portrayed as sub-human rather then human and described in as animals, monsters etc.
Streets vs Suites…
Think of media - with the saturation of the minds of those in society about the dangers of street crime, whether it be through media, television programmes, games or even toys, it is hardly surprising that street crime is viewed as more harmful than corporate crime.
Wilson (1975) considers predatory street crime to be a far more serious matter than consumer fraud, anti trust violations
because predatory crime, makes difficult or impossible the maintenance of meaningful human communities.
The lack of focus on corporate crime adds to the myth that the young, economically disadvantaged male perpetrates the majority of crime and it is this type of crime that society fixates upon. It is understandable that the public are unaware or ignorant of the harm created by corporate crime.
Evaluation of state crime - Marxists…
Marxists look at all manner of harmful activity as being state crime, some question what the parameters are.
This is the same issue raised elsewhere in relation to transgressive approaches to crime. For all the problems of limiting considerations of crime to transgressions of specific laws, opening it up to all harm becomes very unwieldy.
While everyone would agree that torture or genocide are state crimes, some might question whether the absence of health and safety and equality legislation could be considered as such; yet Marxists and feminists might describe such measures as states causing harm.
Evaluation of state crime - ethnocentricity…
Some worry that discourses of human rights can be ethnocentric, seeking to apply western norms to all societies.
While the argument is often used to oppose international intervention in countries (such as Iraq, for example) it would be difficult to justify the argument when presented with specific examples: it does not seem acceptable to argue that women should have fewer rights in Saudi Arabia than in the UK just because those happen to be the local norms and values.
The whole point of a discourse of human rights is to challenge and change such values.
Guantanamo Bay…
In the wake of terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001, the administration – headed by President George Bush – declared a ‘war on terror’. He argued that the need to counter terrorism and keep people safe overrode the obligation to respect human rights.
Guantánamo Bay was established by the United States in January 2002 as a place for the US authorities to hold people perceived to be ‘enemy combatants’ in this war on terror. The first detainees were transferred to the prison camp, based in Cuba, on 11 January 2002.
779 men have been taken to the facility since then. Of these, only seven have been convicted, including five as a result of pre-trial agreements under which they pleaded guilty in return for the possibility of release from the base. These men faced trial by ‘military commission’. The proceedings did not meet fair trial standards.
Only one Guantánamo detainee has been transferred to the US mainland for trial in a civilian court.
There are currently 107 detainees held in the US detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Of them, 47 have been cleared for transfer, yet still remain behind bars.
