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Globalisation

‘the widening, deepening and speeding up of world wide interconnectedness in all aspects of life from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual’ (Held et al 1999)

The global criminal economy

• As societies become more interconnected, crime increases across national borders.

• There are new opportunities for crime , new means for committing crime and new offences, such as various cyber-crimes.

• Make a note of some of the forms that global crime takes.

Globalisation- supply and demand

• Part of the reason for transnational crime is the economy of demand and supply.

• The rich west demands products eg. drugs, sex workers.• The poor third world countries supply these services.• For example in Columbia 20% of the population is dependent

on the cocaine trade for their livelihood.

Global risk consciousness• Globalisation has bought with it an increase in insecurities

surrounding the movement of people such as asylum seekers, economic migrants etc.

• This in turn had led to increasing border patrols to protect countries from this perceived threat.

• Much of this is whipped up by media ‘moral panics’ about terrorists and ‘scroungers’, ‘flooding’ the country.

• This has also bought about attempts at international cooperation eg. The ‘wars’ on terror, drugs etc.

Globalisation, capitalism and crime

• Taylor (1997) suggests that globalisation, by giving free rein to capitalism has led to greater inequality and thus to increased crime.

• This works on the level of transnational companies who switch production to low wage countries with little thought for health and safety etc. These countries have difficulty controlling there own economies.

• Also individualism created by marketisation has led to people making decisions based on personal gain rather than community benefits or social cohesion.

• At the other end of the social scale the poor in developed countries experience more relative deprivation because of unemployment and turn to crime. For example L.A. drugs gangs.

• Also Taylor points out that grand scale crime by elite groups is created by globalisation, such as banking fraud and insider trading.

• Taylor is good for linking global trends to changes in the patterns of crime but it doesn’t explain why some people don’t turn to crime!

Patterns of criminal organisations

• Hobbs and Dunningham looked at the way local crime is organised and how this is linked to economic changes created by globalisation.

• Task: Describe and evaluate Hobbs and Dunningham’s work.

McMafia – Misha Glenny (2008)

• Glenny refers to the organisations which emerged in the old Soviet block countries after the fall of communism as McMafia.

• The fall of communism in 1989 co-incided with the deregulation of global markets.

• Under communism the govt regulated the price of everything. After the fall they deregulated prices except for natural resources which stayed at the old price – a fortieth of the world market price.

• This meant that those with any means to buy oil, diamonds etc could sell them on at a massive profit on the world market. This created many rich capitalists.

• The fall of communism also meant increasing disorder and these wealthy capitalists hired ‘mafias’ to protect their interests. These were ruthless and violent and unlike traditional mafia had no family hierarchy but purely pursued self interest.

• The Chechen mafia were one such organisation who quickly spread their operations to non-Chechen groups and made global criminal links.

Green crime• This can be defined as crime against the

environment.• Regardless of the creation of nation states the

Earth is in fact a single connected eco-system.• Atmospheric pollution in one country turns to

acid rain in another country.• Use the text to find another example.

Global risk society and the environment

• The major risks we face today are of our own making. Eg. Global warming

• Beck (1992) -new technology and productivity have created new dangers which are global rather than local. Beck calls late modern society ‘global risk society’

Green criminology• Many of the problems created by technological advances

such as global warming are not the result of criminal activity, as such.

• Traditional criminology has only been interested in law breaking activity. This makes for clear cut subject matter but it is criticised for accepting the definitions of crime shaped by big business and power elites.

Green criminology

• GC takes a more radical approach.• It starts from the notion of harm rather than

law.• White (2008) argues that if harm is done to

the environment or human/non-human animals that this should be the subject of green criminology regardless of it’s legal status.

• This is transgressive criminology since it oversteps the traditional boundaries of criminology.

• Where have you encountered this term before? • White points out that different countries have different laws

so it makes sense to adopt a wider global perspective.• How is this view similar to Marxist analyses of crimes of the

powerful?

Two views of harm

• Task: 1. Writing - Outline the difference between the

anthropocentric and the ecocentric view of environmental harm.

2. Discussion – look at the purple box page 130 and make a brief note of the answers you and your partner arrive at.

Types of green crime• South et al (2008) identifies 2 types of green crime.1. Primary crime- resulting directly from the destruction of the

Earth. These include-air pollution, deforestation, species decline, water pollution.

2. Secondary crime- this comes of breaking the rules that could prevent environmental disasters. These include – state violence against opposition groups and illegal waste dumping.

Task• For each of the crimes of mentioned try to

identify a perpetrator and a victim of the crime.

Evaluation of green criminology

It recognises the growing threat of environmental issues and provides a focus to examine some of these risks

It is too broad a field of study because it operates outside legally defined boundaries. It is thought to be too based on values and therefore not objective enough.

State Crime

• Green and Ward define state crime as ‘illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by or with the complicity of, state agencies’.

• This can include genocide, war crimes, torture, imprisonment without trial and assassination.

• Identify McLaughlin’s 4 categories of state crime.

This is one of the most serious crimes because….

• The sheer scale of such crime. For example Pol Pot in Cambodia is estimated to have killed 1/5 of the countries population. And it is not just third world countries but Britain and the US have been guilty of torture in Ireland and more recently Guantanamo Bay.

• The national government is the source of law, so it is hard to challenge these abuses. The state can persecute those who speak against it.

Human Rights

• Task: Define human rights.• Herman and Julia Schwendinger argue that we

should define crime in terms of the violation of human rights rather than the breaking of rules.

• If a state practises racism or sexism or economically exploits its citizens it is violating human rights and should br guilty of a crime.

• In this view the definition of crime is highly political. For example the Nazi’s simply made it legal to persecute Jews. If we accept the legal view we may become subservient to whatever the government decides.

• The Schwendingers argue that Sociology should defend human rights- this again is transgressive criminology because it goes beyond traditional criminology as defined by law.

• Evaluate this position using Cohen.

State crime and the culture of denial

• Cohen does see human rights and state crime as increasingly important because of the growing impact of human rights organisations and the focus in criminology on victims.

• While dictatorships simply deny human rights abuses, democracies have to legitimate their actions in complex ways.

Task

• Describe Cohen’s 3 stages of state denial.• Briefly describe how Cohen uses Matza’s

techniques of neutralisation to show how states justify their deviant behaviour.

The social conditions of state crime

• Social psychologists have explained crimes of ‘obedience’ such as the holocaust or My Lai (where 400 were massacred by American soldiers in Vietnam) as a result of socialisation and social processes where such behaviour becomes acceptable.

• What are Kelman and Hamiltons 3 features which produce obedience?

Bauman (1989)

• Bauman argues that the social conditions which produced holocaust included many of the features of modern society- such as science and technology and the division of labour.

• He says that to understand the holocaust one must understand the ability of modern society to turn mass murder into a routine administrative task.