State Crime

Question 1

What is state crime?

Answer 1

Crime committed by state

Question 2

4 categories of state crime

Answer 2

Political - corruption / censorship
Crimes by security or police - eg torture/ dissapearence
Economic - officials violations of health and safety laws
Social and cultural crimes - institutional racism

Question 3

One of most serious types of crime because

Answer 3

Power of state enables it to commit extremely large scale crimes with widespread victimisation

EG- economic and political can bring death

State is source of law

Question 4

Spiral of denial - what is it?

Answer 4

COHEN - Dictatorships deny commuting human right abuses, democratic states have to legitimise their actions in more complex ways

Question 5

COHEN - how do they legitimate their actions?

Answer 5

Stage 1 - it didn’t happen
Stage 2 - if it did happen, it is something else
Stage 3 - even if it is what you say it is, they justify it

Question 6

Neutralisation theory: what is it?

Answer 6

COHEN - suggests 5 techniques when attempting to justify human right violations

1- denial of victim
2- denial of injury
3-denial of responsibility
4-condemning the condemners (the whole world is picking on us and it’s worse elsewhere)
5- appeal to higher loyalty (the appeal to the higher cause)