Human rights and state crime Flashcards
(19 cards)
Define state crime
illegal / deviant activities perpetrated by or with state agencies.
State agencies examples
Armed forces, secret services, civil servants, police, prison service, government and politic leaders.
State crime examples
Genocide
War crimes
Torture
Imprisonment without trial
assassination
Supporting terrorist activities
Invasion of countries with less power.
McLaughlin (2001) identifies what four categories of state crime.
- Political
- crimes by security
- Economic crimes
- Social and cultural crime
Define dictatorship
Government by a dictator, a ruler with total power over a country.
Define democracy
System of government by whole population/all eligible members of a state, typically through a election.
Define capitalism
Economic and political system where trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
Define Communism
government will control the economy.
Scale of state crime
The power of the state enables it to commit extremely large scale crimes with widespread victimisation.
Scale of crime - Example
Combodia:
1975-1978
Khmer Rouge government of Pol Pot is believed to have killed up to 2 million people.
1/5 of the country’s population
Michaloski and Kramer - ‘Great power and great crimes are inseparable’ state crime is…
The ways that economic and political elites can bring death, disease and loss to tens of thousands with a single decision, and can affect entire human groups through the creation of criminal systems of oppression and exploitation.
Monopoly
The state’s monopoly of power=potential to inflict massive harm, conceals its crimes/evade punishment.
Media attention
Mainly focuses on third world dictatorships, democratic states such as Britain and the US have been guilty of crimes such as the military use of torture in Northern Ireland or Iraq.
State is the source of the law
State’s role to define what is criminal, and to manage the criminal justice system and prosecute offenders.
Undermines the system of justice.
Herman and Schwendinger
- Critical criminologists
Herman and Schwendinger - definition of crime
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 Criminals.
The state as a perpetrator
Any state which allows discrimination of being a human is essentially violating human rights, thus they are perpetrators of crime.
Definition of crime is inevitably political.
1930’s the Nazi state attacked the human rights of Jews and other German citizens.
legally.
passing the laws that persecuted them!
