Crime & Deviance - Globalisation - Globalised Crime Examples & Effects

How has Globalisation effected Crime?

More Opportunities:

  • Castells: Globalisation opens up opportunities for new types of crime and ways of committing it
  • E.g. prostitution, drug trade, illegal weapon trade etc.

Supply in Demand:

  • Demand for drugs, sex workers, body parts and cheap labour in affluent countries has increased and is supplied by poor of developing countries.
  • This leads to emigration to developed western countries.

Growing Inequality:

  • Creates winners and losers in the global marketplaces
  • Globalisation creates new patterns of inequalities

Disorganised Capitalism: (Lash & Urry)

Lash & Urry: Globalisation has been accompanied by less regulation and few state controls over business and finance.

  • Deregulation, magnetisation and privatisation.
  • Less social cohesion and opportunity, more insecurity

Taylor argues this has less to fewer job opportunities and more job insecurity; an increase of unemployment in the developed world and an increase of exploitation of workers in the developing.

Cultural Globalisation:

  • With the spread of consumerist ideology in a media centred society
  • Media saturated contemporary societies expose people to ideology of consumerism.

Growing Individualisation: Bauman

  • Individuals in late modernity are left to find their own solutions to globally produced problems
  • Rewards in society increasingly seen in terms of material and financial gains.
  • Individuals put gain above that of community. This leads to crimes such as trafficking.

Global Risk Society: Beck

  • Globalisation adds to the insecurity and uncertainty of life in modernity.
  • People become more 'risk conscious' and fearful

The Nature and Extent of Global Crime

The international illegal drug trade:

  • The UNODC 2007 drug report suggested this trade was worth $332 billion each year. This was higher than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 88% of the countries in the world.
  • The Home Office estimates that over half of acquisitive crime is drug-related.

Human Trafficking:

  • Human trafficking is the illegal movement and smuggling of people.
  • The National Crime Agency estimated as many as 13,000 people in Britain who were victims of slavery.
  • There is also a global criminal network dealing with the trade in illegal immigrants, smuggling people into countries they are unable to enter legally.

Money Laundering:

  • Money laundering is concerned with making money obtained illegally look like it came from legal sources.
  • Castells calls this 'matrix of global crime' as criminals who deal with large amounts of money need to launder their money to avoid their criminal activities from coming to the attention of law-enforcement.
  • The increase of technology has made it easier to launder 'dirty money' through complex financial transactions.

Cyber-Crime:

  • Cyber-crime refers to a wide range of criminal acts committed with the help of communication and informational technology.
  • Cyber crime is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world.
  • Detica estimates financial cyber-crimes cost the UK £27 billion each year.
  • Examples of Cyber-crimes include:
    • internet-based freud
    • Terrorist webstes and netwokring
    • Cyber-attacks, such as hacking
    • Identity theft

Transnational Organised Crime

  • Castells argues that globalisation has created transnational networks of organised crime, which opperate in many countries.
  • Farr suggests there are two main types of global criminal networks:
    • Established Mafias: these have existed before globalisation occurred - e.g. the Italian-American mafia - these have adapted their organisations to take advantage of the various new opportunities opened up by globalisation.
    • Newer Organised Crime Groups: these have emerged since the creation of globalisation and the collapse of the communist regimes of Russia and Eastern Europe. - e.g. the Russian, East European and Albanian criminal groups.
  • Glenny uses the term 'McMafia' to describe the way transnational organised crime mirrors the activities of legal transnational corporations, such as McDonald's. They both are operating as purely self-interested economic organisations.

From Global to Local - Glocalism:

  • Hobbs and Dunnighan suggest that global criminal networks need to work with local contexts to function. For example, the drugs trade and human trafficking require local drug dealers and pimps, and these local criminals require the global networks to get their 'products'.
  • Hobbs created the term 'glocal' to describe this inter-connectivity between local and global transnational crimes.