State Crime

Question 1

What is state crime?

Answer 1

Defined as any illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the consent of, state agencies.

Question 2

How does McLaughlin categorise state crime?

Answer 2

1. Political crimes - corruption and censorship.
2. Crime committes by the security forces - genocide, torture.
3. Economic crimes - violations of Health and Safety laws.
4. Social and cultural crimes - institutional crimes.

Question 3

What are the types of state crime?

Answer 3

War crimes, torture, genocide, state corporate crime.

Question 4

What are war crimes?

Answer 4

Include the deliberate targeting of civilians by states in times of war, torture, inhumane treatment in prisoners, taking hostages, using civilians as shields, using child soldiers, settlement of the occupied territory, War crimes can be committed by individuals, groups and the state. They are punishable offences under international law under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN in 1948.

Question 5

Examples of war crime?

Answer 5

USA dropping atom bombs on Japan.
Saturation bombing of Dreseden by the UK in WWII.
Vietname by the USA.

Question 6

Are war crime enforced?

Answer 6

War crimes are often invisible, there are no official statisics or victim surveys on war crimes so it is difficult to estimate how exclusive they are. However, organisations such as Amnesty International and Liberty report more massive human rights abuses across the world.

Question 7

Examples of war criminal put on trial?

Answer 7

Numberg trials of the Nazis.

The Hague trial of the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević.

Question 8

What is torture?

+examples

Answer 8

e.g. waterboarding. Examples are the UK and USA using extraordinary rendition in the Iraq war. Taking prisoner from a country where torture is banned to a country where it is allowed.

Question 9

What is genocide?

+examples

Answer 9

Refers to violent crimes committed against national, ethnic or religious groups. It is referred to as ethnic cleansing. Examples - Turkish genocide against 1 million Armenians, the Holocaust of 6 million Jews and other groups, ethnic cleansing of Bosina and Rwanda.

Question 10

What are state-corporate crime?

Answer 10

State crimes are often committed in conjunction with large corporations. Michaelowski amd Kramer categories these crimes into:

1. State-initiated crimes.
2. State-faciliated crimes.

Question 11

What are state-initiated crimes? + example (Michaelowski amd Kramer)

Answer 11

Occurs when the state approves or directs coporate crime. The challener space shuttle disaster in 1986. It happened because NASA approved budget cuts for the private compnay that made parts for the shuttle which led to negligence.

Question 12

What are state-faciliated crimes? + example (Michaelowski amd Kramer)

Answer 12

Occurs when the state fails to regulate the private industries. Deepwater Horizon BP oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. BP’s cost cutting caused the oil rig to collapse and the US gov was found to have failed to properly oversee the oil rig.

Question 13

Why is state crime so serious according to Green and Ward?

Answer 13

1. Scale of the crime, 2. National soverignty, 3. State is the source of the law.

Question 14

Why does the scale of state crime make it so serious? (Green and Ward)

Answer 14

The power of the state enable it to commit extremely large-scale crimes with widespread victimisation. The state controls the armed forces and its power allows it to conceal the crimes committed by is armed forces.

Question 15

Why does national soverignty make state crime so serious? (Green and Ward)

Answer 15

The state has the supreme authority within its borders. This makes it difficult for international organisations, such as the UN, to intervene despite the existence of international conventions against such as acts.

Question 16

Why does the state is the source of the law make state crime so serious? (Green and Ward)

Answer 16

It is the state that defines what is criminal so it can avoid defining the its own actions as criminal. Nazi gov created laws permitting it to sterlise disabled people against their will. The state can also use its power persecute its opposition.

Question 17

What is the domestic defintion of state crime? (Chambliss)

Answer 17

State crime is any act defined by the law as criminal and is committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representatives of the state?

Question 18

What is the evalutation of the domestic defintion of state crime?

Answer 18

Ignores the fact that the state has the power to avoid criminalising its own actions and they can pass laws allowing them to carry out harmful acts.
Nazi Germany passed laws allowing them to forcefully sterilise disabled people.

Question 19

How does Michalowski define state crime? (Zemiology)

Answer 19

Defines state crime not just as illegal acts but also as ‘legally permissable acts whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts’ in the harm they cause.

Question 20

What should the study of crime be replace with according to Hillaryard et al?

Answer 20

Replace the study of crime with zemiology - the study of harms, whether or not they are against the law. For example, this would include state-facilitated poverty. If the gov creates a law that creates poverty - would be a state crime.

Question 21

What is the evaluation of zemiology?

Answer 21

What level of harm must occur for an act to be defined as a crime?
What counts as a harm - replaces the states arbitrary defintion with a sociologist’s arbitrary defintion.

Question 22

What is the labelling theory’s view on state crime?

Answer 22

Whether an act constitutes as a crime depends on societal reaction. State crime is socially constructed - what people regard as a state cime can vary over time and between cultures or social groups. This prevents sociologists imposing their own defintion of state crime when this may not be how participants define the situation.

Question 23

What is the evaluation of the labelling theory’s view on state crime?

Answer 23

Uncear who is supposed to be the relevant audience that decides whether a state crime has been committed.
Marxists - audiences’ defintions may be manipulated by r/c ideology - see war as good.

Question 24

What is the international law definition on state crime? (Rothe and Mullins)

Answer 24

Define state crime as any action by or om behalf of a state that violates international law and/or a state’s own domestic law. Uses globally agreed defintions of state crime. Prevents sociologists putting their own personal defintions of harm.

Question 25

What is the evaluation of the international law definition on state crime?

Answer 25

International law - made by the UN - but powerful countires in the UN can use money + to prevent laws being passed.
International law focuses largely on war crimes against humanity, rather than other state crimes such as corruption.

Question 26

What are natural rights?

Answer 26

Rights that people have simply by virtue of existing, such as the right to life, liberty and free speech.

Question 27

What are civil rights?

Answer 27

The right to vote, to privacy, to fair trial, to edu.

Question 28

How do Schwendigner and Schwendigner define state crime?

Answer 28

As the violation of the people’s basic human rights by the state or its agents. Imperialism, racism or economic expolitation are committing crimes - denying people basic rights. Sociologists should defend human rights if necessary against the state’s laws.

Question 29

What is transgressive criminology?

Answer 29

Don’t accept the defintion of state crime by the state.

Question 30

How does Kirste et all add to Schwendigner and Schwendigner’s definition state crime?

Answer 30

+ Kirste et al - all states care about human rights image - global social norms, this makes them suspectable to ‘shaming’ can promote leverage to make them respect their citizens’ rights.

Question 31

How does S.Cohen criticise Schwendigner and Schwendigner’s definition state crime?

Answer 31

Criticises gorss violations of human rights, such as torture, are clearly crimes, other acts - such as economic expolitation are not self-evidently criminal - even though they are morally unacceptable.

Question 32

What is the evaulation for Schwendigner and Schwendigner’s definition state crime?

Answer 32

Disagreements about what counts as a human right.

Question 33

How does Adorno et al explain state crime?

Answer 33

Identifies and ‘authoritarian personality’ that includes, a willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question.

Question 34

How did Germans have a authoritarian personality? (Adorno et al)

Answer 34

During WWII - Germans has an authortiarian personality due to - the punitive, disciplinarian socialisation patterns that were common at the time. Often thought that people who carry out torture are psychopaths. But research suggests there is little psychological difference than them and ‘normal’ people. Ardent’s study of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann - normal and not really anti-semitic.

Question 35

What are crimes of obedience?

Answer 35

Crime is usually defined as deviance from social norms. State crimes - crimes of conformity, require obedience to a higher authority - the state or its representatives. For example, in a corrupt police unit, the officier who accepts bribes is conforming to the units norms, while at the same time is breaking the law. Conforming to one norm means deviating from another. Many people are willing to obey authority even when this involves harming others - part of socilation.

Question 36

How can people overcome norms according to Green and Ward?

Answer 36

To overcome norms against the use of cruelty, individuals are re-socialised. They are exposed to propaganda about ‘the enemy’

Question 37

How do states create ‘enclaves of barbarism’?

Answer 37

Torture is practiced, in military bases, segregated from society - 9-5.

Question 38

What are the features to create crimes of obedience? (Kelman and Hamilton)

Answer 38

1. Authorisation - when acts are ordered or approved by those in authority, normal/moral principles replaced by the duty to obey.
2. Routinisation - once the crime has been committed, there is strong pressure to turn the act into a rountine that individuals can perform in a detached manner.
3. Dehumanisation - when the enemy is protrayed as sub-human, normal principles of morality do not apply.

Question 39

How was the Holocaust made possible by modernity according to Bauman?

Answer 39

1. Division of Labour - each person was responsible for 1 small task, so no-one felt personally responsible for atrocity.
2. Bureaucratisation - normalised the killing by making ti a reptitive, rule-governed and routine ‘job’. It also meant that the victims could be dehumanised as mere ‘units’.
3. Instrumental rationality - where rational, efficient methods are used to achieve a goal, regardless of what the goal is. In modern businesses, the goal is profit in the Holocaust it was murder.
4. Science and technology - from the railways transporting victims to the death camps, to the indurstrially produced gas used to kill them.

Question 40

What is the evaluation of modernity as an explanation of state crime?

Answer 40

Not all genocides occur in a high organised division of labour that allows participants to distance themselves - Rwandian genocide carried out by large groups.
Nazi ideology - stressed a single monolithic German racial identity - excluded minorities - Jews, Slavs, Gypsies - without ideology the Holocaust - would have not happened.

Question 41

Why is there a culture of denial of state crimes according to Alvarez?

Answer 41

Recent years have see the growing impact of the international human rights movement. For example, through the work organisations such as Amnesty International - bringing pressure on states.

Question 42

What do states have to do now to hide state crimes according to Cohen?

Answer 42

States have to put more effort to conceal or justify their human rights crimes, or re-label them. Dictatorships flatly deny any human righs abuses.

Question 43

How do democratic states hide their human rights abuses according to Cohen?

Answer 43

Spiral of denial:
STAGE 1 - ‘it didn’t happen’ - state claims there was no massacre. But then human rights organisations, victims and the media show it did happen.
STAGE 2 - ‘if it did happen’ - ‘it’ it something else. The state say it was self-defence, not murder.
STAGE 3 - ‘even if it is what you say it is, it’s justified’ - to fight the war on terror.

Question 44

What are the techniques of neutralisation? (Cohen)

Answer 44

1. Denial of the victim - they exaggerate; they are terrorists; they are used to violence; look what they do to each other.
2. Denial of injury - we are the real victims, not them.
3. Denial of responsibility - I was only obeying order, doing my duty. This justification is often used by individual policemen, death camp guards, etc.
4. Condemning of condemners - they are condemning us only because of their anti-semitism (Israeli version), their hostility to Islam (Arab version), their racism.
5. Appeal to a higher loyalty - self-righteous justifications that calim to be serving a higher cause, whether the nation, Zionism, Islam, the defence of the ‘free world’, national security, etc.

Question 45

What is the Maxist view on state crime?

Answer 45

It is motivated by money. Includes most cases of corruption and state-corporate crimeof the sort described by Michalowski and Kramer.

Question 46

What is state crime motivated by according to Marxists?

Answer 46

The desire for scarce resources, such as the notion that the American invasion of Iraq was motivated by oil, would also be of interest. Genocide would not be relevant, unless the motive was to gain control of land rich in assets.

Question 47

What is the evalutation of the Marxist view on state crime?

Answer 47

Marxists might wish to ignore the Cambodian scenario in which Pol Pot’s attempt to impose an extreme communist regime lef to the death of 2 million people.

Question 48

What is the Radical Feminist view on state crime?

Answer 48

Condemn state crime as man made, as men head most gov departments and business corporations worldwide. They would point out that rape is commonpolace in times of war as male invaders impose their power on the most vulnerable members of society.

Question 49

What happened to girls in Darfur? (Radical Feminsim)

Answer 49

Young girls were systematically kidnapped and taken into sexual and domestic slavery. But the international community has taken no real action against this, perhaps because it is merely an exteme version of what is accepted everywhere under patriarchy.

Question 50

What is the Eco Feminist view on state crime?

Answer 50

Contrast men’s aggressive behaviour and destruction of the enviroment with women’s capacity to produce lfie and to nurture.

Question 51

What is the evalutation of the Feminist view on state crime?

Answer 51

With the rise of women into positions of power - they can be involved in corruption to their state crimes. For example, American women were implicated in the torture of prisoners at Abu Graib.