Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Human rights and state crimes (Examples of state crimes (Assassination or…
Human rights and state crimes
Green and Ward (2004)
- illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies to further state policies.
Problems with defining state crimes
The state defines what crime is, therefore has the power to avoid defining its own acts as criminal.
Even when states commit acts that are clearly illegal they have the power to disguise, decriminalise and justify the actions by defining them as something other than crimes (
techniques of neutralisation
)
A transgressive approach: state crime as the violation of human rights
Schwendinger and Schwendinger (1975)
and
Green and Ward (2012)
- crimes should be considered as violations of human rights.
'State organizational deviance involving the violation of human rights
What are human rights?
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
- established a legal framework for defining and enforcing universal human rights.
Green & Ward
- global social norms
Examples of state crimes
Assassination or 'target killing'
Corruption
The tortune and illegal treatment or punishment of citizens
War crimes
Genocide
State-sponsored terrorism
Explaining state crimes
Integrated theory
State crimes arise from similar circumstances
They all involve the integration of 3 elements; motivation of offenders, opportunities to commit crimes, and failures of control (intentional or not)
The crime and obedience model -
Kelman & Hamilton (1989)
Not rule-breaking but conformity to rules, violent states encourage obedience by those who carry out state crimes, in 3 ways.
Authorisation
Dehumanisation
Routinization
Swann (2001)
- 'enclaves of barbarism'
Cohen (2001)
applies
Sykes & Matza's (1957)
concepts of
techniques of neutralisation
Problems of researching state crimes
Cohen
- difficult to find the true extent because governments adopt strategies of denial to either deny or justify actions.
Tombs and Whyte (2003)
- researchers face strong official resistance.
Green & Ward (2012)
- research is difficult and dangerous, and the state can use the law and CJS to control and persecute researchers.