Globalisation, Green Crime, Human Rights and State Crime

Globalisation: Increasing interconnectedness of societies
- Events in one locality shaped by distant events, and vice versa
- Definition (Held):
- "The widening, deepening, and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of life, from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the
spiritual"
- Causes of globalisation:
- Spread of new information and communication technologies (ICT)
- Influence of global mass media
- Cheap air travel
- Deregulation of financial and other markets, opening them to competition
- Easier movement of businesses to countries with higher profits

Globalisation of crime: Increasing interconnectedness of crime across national borders
- Same processes enabling globalisation of legitimate activities also spread transnational organised crime
- Creates new opportunities, means, and types of crime (e.g., cyber-crimes)
- Manuel Castells (1998): Global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion annually
- Takes various forms:
1. Arms trafficking to illegal regimes, guerrilla groups, terrorists
2. Trafficking in nuclear materials (especially from former communist countries)
3. Smuggling illegal immigrants (e.g., Chinese Triads earn 2.5 billion dollars annually)
4. Trafficking women and children (linked to prostitution/slavery; up to 500,000 trafficked to Western Europe annually)
5. Sex tourism (Westerners traveling to Third World countries for sex, sometimes involving minors)
6. Trafficking body parts for organ transplants (e.g., 2,000 organs annually from executed criminals in China)
7. Cyber-crimes (e.g., identity theft, child pornography)
8. Green crimes (e.g., illegal dumping of toxic waste in Third World countries)
9. International terrorism (ideological links via Internet/ICT, not local territorial links)
10. Smuggling legal goods (e.g., alcohol, tobacco to evade taxes) and stolen goods (e.g., cars for foreign markets)
11. Trafficking cultural artefacts and stolen art
12. Trafficking endangered species or body parts (e.g., for traditional remedies)
13. Drugs trade (worth 300-400 billion dollars annually at street prices)
14. Money laundering (profits up to 1.5 trillion dollars annually)
- Demand and supply sides of the global criminal economy:
- Demand: Rich Western countries drive demand for illegal products/services
- Supply: Linked to globalisation; e.g., impoverished populations in Third World countries (e.g., Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan) cultivate drugs due to high profits and low investment
- Example: In Colombia, 20% of the population depends on cocaine production; cocaine outsells all other exports combined
- Understanding drug crime requires examining both consuming and producing countries

Globalisation creates new insecurities and a mentality of "risk consciousness":
- Risk is seen as global, not tied to specific places
- Increased movement of people (economic migrants, asylum seekers) raises anxieties in Western countries about crime, disorder, and border protection
- Role of media:
- Much knowledge about risks comes from media, which often exaggerate dangers
- Media create moral panics about immigration, portraying immigrants as terrorists or scroungers "flooding" the country
- Negative coverage fuels hate crimes against minorities in Europe, including the UK
- Intensification of social control at national level:
- UK example:
- Toughened border control regulations (e.g., fines for airlines bringing undocumented passengers)
- No legal limits on immigration detention periods
- Other European states:
- Introduced fences, CCTV, and thermal imaging to prevent illegal crossings
- Increased international cooperation and control:
- "Wars" on terror, drugs, and crime intensified after 9/11 (2001)

Taylor: Globalisation has changed patterns and extent of crime
- Free rein to market forces has increased inequality and crime
- Crime at both ends of the social spectrum:
- For the poor:
- Transnational corporations move manufacturing to low-wage countries, causing job insecurity, unemployment, and poverty
- Deregulation reduces government control over economies (e.g., job creation, taxation)
- Decline in state welfare spending
- Marketisation promotes individualism, undermining social cohesion
- Global media fosters materialistic culture, linking success to consumption
- Lack of legitimate job opportunities drives people to crime (e.g., drugs trade)
- Example: De-industrialisation in Los Angeles led to growth of 10,000-member drug gangs
- For elites:
- Deregulation of financial markets enables insider trading and tax evasion
- Transnational bodies (e.g., EU) create opportunities for fraudulent subsidy claims (over 7 billion dollars annually)
- Subcontracting leads to illegal employment practices (e.g., below minimum wage, health/safety violations)
- Criticisms of Taylor’s theory:
- Links global capitalist trends to crime patterns but does not explain why some individuals turn to crime while others do not

Rothe and Friedrichs: Examine role of international financial organisations (e.g., IMF, World Bank) in "crimes of globalisation"
- These organisations are dominated by major capitalist states (e.g., USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France)
- Example: World Bank has 188 member countries, but five nations hold over a third of voting rights
- Structural adjustment programmes:
- IMF and World Bank impose pro-capitalist, neoliberal policies on poor countries as loan conditions
- Policies often require:
- Cuts to health and education spending
- Privatisation of public services (e.g., water supply), industries, and natural resources
- Consequences:
- Western corporations expand into these countries
- Creates conditions for crime:
- Example: Rwanda in the 1980s – structural adjustment caused mass unemployment, contributing to the 1994 genocide (Rothe et al, 2008)
- Cain:
- IMF and World Bank act as a "global state"
- Their actions, while not illegal, cause widespread social harms:
- Directly: Cutting welfare spending
- Indirectly: Contributing to crises like the Rwandan genocide

Globalisation and de-industrialisation create new criminal opportunities at local levels:
- Example: Winlow’s study of bouncers in Sunderland
- Hobbs and Dunningham’s study of a post-industrial town:
- Crime organisation linked to economic changes from globalisation
- Involves individuals with contacts acting as "hubs" in loose-knit networks
- Networks include others seeking opportunities, often blending legitimate and illegitimate activities
- Contrasts with past hierarchical "Mafia"-style organisations (e.g., Kray brothers in East End of London)

New forms of criminal organisation:
- Often have international links (e.g., drugs trade) but remain rooted in local contexts
- Individuals rely on local contacts and networks to find opportunities and sell drugs
- Hobbs and Dunningham’s conclusion:
- Crime operates as a "glocal" system – locally based but with global connections
- Form of crime varies by local conditions, even if influenced by global factors (e.g., drug availability)
- Changes due to globalisation:
- Shift from rigid hierarchical gang structures to loose, flexible, entrepreneurial networks
- Criticisms:
- Unclear if these patterns are new or if older structures have disappeared
- Both forms may have always co-existed
- Findings may not generalise to other criminal activities or locations

Glenny: "McMafia" refers to criminal organisations emerging in Russia/Eastern Europe after the fall of communism
- Fall of communism (1989) coincided with deregulation of global markets
- Origins of transnational organised crime:
- Soviet Union collapse led to deregulation of most sectors, except natural resources (e.g., oil, gas, diamonds)
- Natural resources remained at Soviet prices (often 1/40th of global market price)
- Former communist officials and KGB generals bought resources cheaply, sold abroad for huge profits, becoming Russia’s new capitalist class (oligarchs)
- Rise of mafias:
- Collapse of the communist state created disorder
- Oligarchs turned to mafias for protection of wealth
- Mafias formed alliances between ex-KGB and ex-convicts (e.g., Chechen mafia)
- Unlike traditional Italian/American mafias (based on ethnic/family ties), Russian mafias were economic organisations focused on self-interest
- Example: Chechen mafia franchised operations to non-Chechen groups, selling their "brand" to protection rackets
- Role of criminal organisations:
- Provided protection for oligarchs’ wealth and means to move it abroad
- Enabled Russian capitalist class to enter the global economy

Crime against the environment
- Linked to globalisation and interconnectedness of societies
- Planet is a single eco-system; environmental threats are global, not local
- Examples of global environmental harm:
- Atmospheric pollution from one country causing acid rain in another, poisoning water and destroying forests
- Nuclear accidents (e.g., Chernobyl, Ukraine, 1986) spreading radioactive material over thousands of miles

Modern threats to well-being and the eco-system are human-made, not natural
- Unlike past natural dangers (e.g., drought, famine), today’s risks are created by human activity
- Beck : Late modern society as a "global risk society"
- Increased productivity and technology create "manufactured risks" (e.g., global warming from greenhouse gas emissions)
- Many risks are global, not local (e.g., climate change)
- Example: Mozambique
- Global warming caused Russia’s heatwave, wildfires, and grain shortages
- Russia banned grain exports, raising global grain prices
- Mozambique, dependent on food imports, saw a 30% bread price increase
- Drought (possibly linked to global warming) worsened local harvests
- Result: Riots, looting, and deaths in Mozambique
- International speculators "gambled on hunger" in financial markets (Patel)

Traditional criminology:
- Focuses on acts violating environmental laws (e.g., Situ and Emmons, 2000: "unauthorised act or omission that violates the law")
- Advantage: Clearly defined subject matter
- Criticism: Accepts official definitions shaped by powerful groups (e.g., big business), which may serve their own interests
- Green criminology:
- Focuses on harm, not criminal law (Rob White)
- Studies actions harming the environment, humans, and non-human animals, even if legal
- Wider scope than traditional criminology:
- Many severe environmental harms are not illegal
- A form of transgressive criminology (oversteps traditional boundaries)
- Also known as "zemiology" (study of harms)
- Global perspective:
- Legal definitions vary by country; same action may be a crime in one place but not another
- Avoids reliance on inconsistent national laws shaped by political processes
- Similarity to Marxist view of "crimes of the powerful":
- Marxists: Capitalist class shapes laws to avoid criminalising exploitation
- Green criminologists: Powerful groups (e.g., nation-states, corporations) define environmental harm in their own interests

Anthropocentric view (adopted by nation-states and corporations):
- Human-centred perspective
- Assumes humans have the right to dominate nature for their own ends
- Prioritises economic growth over environmental protection
- Ecocentric view (adopted by green criminology):
- Sees humans and the environment as interdependent
- Environmental harm also harms humans
- Both humans and the environment are vulnerable to exploitation, especially by global capitalism
- Green criminology uses this view as the basis for judging environmental harm

Primary Green Crimes
- Crimes directly resulting from the destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources
- Four main types (South):
1. Crimes of air pollution:
- Burning fossil fuels adds 6 billion tons of carbon annually, contributing to global warming
- Carbon emissions grow at 2% per year
- Criminals: Governments, businesses, consumers
- Walters (2013): Deaths from air pollution-induced breathing problems have doubled in 20 years
2. Crimes of deforestation:
- 1/5 of tropical rainforest destroyed (1960-1990) through illegal logging, cattle ranching, etc.
- Example: Amazon deforestation for beef exports
- Example: Andes pesticide spraying for "war on drugs" destroys food crops, contaminates water, causes illness
- Criminals: States, logging companies, cattle ranchers
3. Crimes of species decline and animal abuse:
- 50 species go extinct daily; 46% of mammals and 11% of birds at risk
- 70-95% of species live in threatened rainforests
- Trafficking of animals and animal parts
- Rise in old crimes (e.g., dog-fights, badger-baiting)
4. Crimes of water pollution:
- 500 million lack clean drinking water; 25 million die annually from contaminated water
- Marine pollution threatens 58% of ocean reefs and 34% of fish
- Example: Deepwater Horizon spill harmed marine life and coasts
- Criminals: Businesses dumping toxic waste, governments discharging untreated sewage

Secondary Green Crimes
- Definition: Crimes arising from the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters
- Two examples (South):
1. State violence against oppositional groups:
- States may use illegal methods against environmental activists
- e.g French secret service bombed Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior to prevent opposition to nuclear testing in the Pacific
- Day: Governments treat nuclear policy opponents as "enemies of the state"
2. Hazardous waste and organised crime:
- Illegal disposal of toxic waste is highly profitable due to high costs of safe disposal
- Example: Italian eco-mafias profit from illegal dumping, often at sea
- Walters: Oceans used as radioactive waste dumps for decades
- Example: 28,500 barrels of radioactive waste dumped by UK authorities/corporations in the 1950s off the Channel Islands
- Globalised nature of illegal dumping:
- Example: European companies’ radioactive waste washed up on Somalia’s shores after the 2004 tsunami (Bridgland, 2006)
- Western businesses ship waste to Third World countries with lower costs and safety standards
- Example: US disposal costs 2,500/ton vs. 3/ton dollars in some Third World countries (Rosoff et al, 1998)
- Transnational corporations sell banned products (e.g., pharmaceuticals) in Third World markets
- Challenges of law enforcement in a globalised world:
- Laws in developed countries increase disposal costs, incentivising illegal dumping in less regulated countries
- Some Third World countries lack legislation to outlaw such practices

Recognises growing importance of environmental issues
Addresses harms and risks of environmental damage to humans and non-human animals
Focus on "harms" rather than legally defined crimes makes it hard to define clear boundaries for study
Defining boundaries involves moral/political judgments about what actions are wrong
Critics argue this is subjective and based on values, not objective criteria

Marxists and critical criminologists argue traditional criminology focuses on "crimes of the streets" and ignores "crimes of the suites" (e.g., corporate crime, state crime)
- State crime:
- Definition (Green and Ward): Illegal or deviant activities by or with the complicity of state agencies to further their policies
- Excludes individual acts (e.g., a police officer accepting a bribe)
- State crime is one of the most serious forms of crime for two reasons:

State power enables it to inflict harm on a massive scale
- Example: Green and Ward estimate 262 million people murdered by governments in the 20th century
- Michalowski and Kramer:
- "Great power and great crimes are inseparable"
- Economic and political elites can cause death, disease, and loss to tens of thousands with a single decision

The state defines crime, upholds laws, and prosecutes offenders
- Its power allows it to conceal crimes, evade punishment, and avoid defining its actions as criminal
- State crime undermines justice and public trust in the legal system
- All states, including democracies (e.g., Britain, USA), have committed crimes
- National sovereignty (states as supreme authorities within their borders) makes external intervention (e.g., by the UN) difficult

McLaughlin identifies four categories of state crime:
1. Political crimes: Corruption, censorship
2. Crimes by security/police forces: Genocide, torture, disappearances of dissidents
3. Economic crimes: Violations of health and safety laws
4. Social and cultural crimes: Institutional racism
- Case studies illustrate different types of state crime

UN definition of genocide: Acts committed to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group
- Rwanda: "The 20th century’s fastest genocide" (Straus)
- Colonial background:
- Rwanda became a Belgian colony in 1922
- Belgians used minority Tutsis to rule over Hutu majority
- Hutus and Tutsis were not distinct ethnic groups:
- Spoke same language, often intermarried
- More like social classes: Tutsis owned livestock; Hutus could become Tutsis by buying cattle
- Belgians "ethnicised" the groups:
- Issued racial identity cards
- Educated groups separately
- Independence and escalation:
- Rwanda gained independence in 1962; Hutus came to power
- 1990s: Economic/political crisis led to civil war
- Hutu hardliners used race hate propaganda against Tutsis to maintain power
- Genocide :
- Trigger: Hutu president’s plane shot down
- 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in 100 days
- Tutsis dehumanised as "cockroaches" and "rats"
- Initial killings by Hutu militia; later, Hutu civilians forced to participate or be killed
- Estimated 1/3 of Hutu population actively participated

State crimes often occur alongside corporate crimes
- Kramer and Michalowski: Two types of state-corporate crime:
1. State-initiated corporate crime:
- States initiate, direct, or approve corporate crimes
- Example: Challenger space shuttle disaster (1986)
- Risky, negligent, cost-cutting decisions by NASA and Morton Thiokol caused the explosion, killing seven astronauts
2. State-facilitated corporate crime:
- States fail to regulate or control corporate behaviour, enabling crime
- Example: Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster (2010)
- BP-leased rig exploded, killing eleven workers and causing the largest accidental oil spill in history
- Official inquiry: Companies (BP, Halliburton, Transocean) made cost-cutting decisions, but government regulators failed to oversee the industry
adequately

Two types of war-related crime:
1. Illegal wars:
- Under international law, only self-defence or UN Security Council approval justifies war
- Example: US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (part of the "war on terror") seen as illegal by many
- Kramer and Michalowski: US and UK falsely claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to justify invasion (2003)
2. Crimes committed during or after war:
- Example: US "neo-liberal colonisation" of Iraq (Whyte)
- Constitution illegally changed to privatise the economy
- Iraqi oil revenues seized for "reconstruction"; 48 billion dollars to US firms in 2004 alone
- Poor oversight led to unclear spending and waste through "cost-plus" contracts
- Example: Torture of prisoners in Iraq War
- US military inquiry found "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib prison
- Nine soldiers convicted (highest-ranking: staff sergeant); no commanding officers or private contractors prosecuted
- Example: Normalisation of terror bombing (Kramer)
- Began in 1930s; continued in WWII (e.g., fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities, atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
- No war crime trials for these actions
- Indiscriminate/deliberate bombing of civilians continues in recent conflicts (e.g., Iraq, Syria)

Defining crime is complex, especially for state crime
- Sociologists have proposed various definitions:
- Green and Ward: State crime as "illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies"
- Focus on actions furthering state policies, not individual acts (e.g., a police officer taking a bribe)
- Challenges:
- States have the power to define laws, making it difficult to classify their own actions as criminal
- National sovereignty limits external intervention (e.g., by the UN)

Chambliss: State crime as "acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representatives of the state"
- Limitations of using domestic law to define state crime:
- States can avoid criminalising their own actions by making laws
- Example: Nazi Germany passed laws allowing compulsory sterilisation of the disabled
- Inconsistencies: The same act may be illegal in one country but legal in another

Michalowski: State crime includes:
- Illegal acts
- Legally permissible acts with harmful consequences similar to illegal acts
- Hillyard: Argue for a broader view of state wrongdoing through "zemiology" (study of harms, regardless of legality)
- Example: State-facilitated poverty
- Advantages of a harms-based definition:
- Prevents states from legalising harmful actions
- Creates a universal standard to compare harm caused by different states
- Criticisms:
- Potential vagueness: What level of harm qualifies as a crime?
- Risk of making the field of study too broad
- Question of who decides what counts as harm: Replaces state definitions with sociologists’ potentially arbitrary judgments

Labelling theory: An act is a crime if the social audience defines it as such
- Audience may witness the act directly or indirectly (e.g., through media)
- Advantages:
- Recognises state crime as socially constructed
- Avoids sociologists imposing their own definitions, reflecting participants’ (perpetrators, victims, audiences) perspectives
- Criticisms:
- Even vaguer than "social harms" definition
- Example: Kauzlarich found anti-Iraq War protestors saw the war as harmful but not criminal
- Unclear who the relevant audience is or how to resolve conflicting audience verdicts
- Ignores how ruling class ideology (e.g., media) can manipulate public perceptions (e.g., legitimising war)

Some sociologists define state crime based on international law (e.g., Geneva and Hague Conventions on war crimes)
- Rothe and Mullins: State crime as any action by or on behalf of a state that violates international or domestic law
- Advantages:
- Avoids reliance on sociologists’ personal definitions or social audience perspectives
- Uses globally agreed definitions of state crime
- Specifically designed to address state crime, unlike most domestic laws
- Criticisms:
- International law is a social construct shaped by power dynamics
- Example: Strand and Tuman: Japan used foreign aid to bribe small nations to oppose the international whaling ban
- Focuses mainly on war crimes and crimes against humanity, neglecting other state crimes (e.g., corruption)

Human rights include:
- Natural rights: Life, liberty, free speech
- Civil rights: Right to vote, privacy, fair trial, education
- Herman and Julia Schwendinger: State crime as the violation of basic human rights by the state or its agents
- States practising imperialism, racism, sexism, or economic exploitation are committing crimes by denying basic rights
- Advantages (Risse):
- Most states care about their human rights image due to global norms
- "Shaming" can pressure states to respect citizens’ rights
- Schwendingers’ view:
- Crime definition is political; sociologists should defend human rights, even against state laws
- Example of transgressive criminology (goes beyond traditional legal definitions)
- Criticisms:
- Stanley Cohen: While gross violations (e.g., torture) are clearly crimes, others (e.g., economic exploitation) are not self-evidently criminal
- Disagreements over what counts as a human right (e.g., freedom from hunger)
- Green and Ward:
- Liberty is meaningless without basic needs (e.g., food)
- Example: British government’s export of food during the Irish famine (1840s) denied human rights and was a state crime

Genocides require cooperation from leaders, soldiers, police, and civilians
- Example: Rwanda and Nazi Germany involved large portions of the population
- Key question: Why and how do normally law-abiding citizens participate in atrocities?

Adorno: Identify an "authoritarian personality" characterised by unquestioning obedience to authority
- Argue many Germans in WWII had this personality due to punitive, disciplinarian socialisation
- Common assumption: Perpetrators of torture / genocide are psychopaths
- Research shows little psychological difference between them and "normal" people
- Example: Arendt: Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann appeared relatively normal and not strongly anti-Semitic

State crimes are crimes of conformity, requiring obedience to authority (e.g., corrupt police units)
- Conforming to one norm (e.g., unit norms) means deviating from another (e.g., law)
- Research: Many people obey authority even when it involves harming others
- Sociologists argue this is due to socialisation into roles and social conditions that make atrocities acceptable
- Green and Ward :
- Torturers often re-socialised through training and propaganda about "the enemy"
- States create "enclaves of barbarism" (e.g., military bases) where torture is normalised
- Kelman and Hamilton: Three features producing crimes of obedience (based on My Lai massacre, Vietnam):
1. Authorisation: Acts ordered/approved by authority replace normal moral principles with duty to obey
2. Routinisation: Crimes become routine, performed in a detached manner
3. Dehumanisation: Enemies portrayed as sub-human, exempt from moral principles

Bauman: The Holocaust was not a breakdown of modern civilisation but a product of its key features:
1. Division of labour: Individuals responsible for small tasks, avoiding personal responsibility for atrocities
2. Bureaucratisation: Killing normalised as repetitive, rule-governed, routine "work"; victims dehumanised as "units"
3. Instrumental rationality: Efficient methods used to achieve goals (e.g., profit in business, murder in the Holocaust)
4. Science and technology: Railways transported victims; industrial gas was used for killing
- The Holocaust as a modern, industrialised "factory system" producing mass murder
- Bauman: The Holocaust resulted from modern rational-bureaucratic civilisation, not its breakdown

Not all genocides involve a division of labour:
- Example: Rwandan genocide carried out directly by large groups
- Ideological factors are crucial:
- Nazi ideology promoted a monolithic German racial identity, excluding minorities (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Slavs) as inferior or sub-human
- This justified treating them outside normal moral standards
- Modern division of labour provided the means for the Holocaust, but racist ideology provided the motivation
- A decade of anti-Semitic propaganda created willing participants and sympathetic bystanders

Alvarež: Growing impact of international human rights movement (e.g., Amnesty International) pressures states
- Cohen: States now work harder to conceal, justify, or re-label human rights crimes
- Dictatorships deny abuses outright; democracies use more complex justifications
- Three-stage "spiral of state denial":
1. "It didn’t happen": State denies the event (e.g., massacre) until evidence (e.g., graves, photos) proves otherwise
2. "If it did happen, it’s something else": State redefines the event (e.g., self-defence, not murder)
3. "Even if it is what you say, it’s justified": State claims justification (e.g., "war on terror")
- Techniques of neutralisation (adapted from Sykes and Matza):
1. Denial of victim: "They exaggerate; they are terrorists; they are used to violence"
2. Denial of injury: "We are the real victims, not them"
3. Denial of responsibility: "I was only obeying orders, doing my duty"
4. Condemning the condemners: "They condemn us due to anti-Semitism, hostility to Islam, or racism"
5. Appeal to higher loyalty**: "We serve a higher cause (e.g., nation, Zionism, Islam, national security)"
- These techniques impose a different interpretation of events rather than denying their occurrence
- Example: US "war on terror" justified coercive interrogation (e.g., hooding, sleep deprivation, waterboarding) as "torture lite"
- Claimed these methods induced stress but were not physically/psychologically damaging
- Cohen: A neutralisation technique to normalise torture