Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
STATE CRIME [2] - Coggle Diagram
STATE CRIME [2]
DEFINING STATE CRIME
- DOMESTIC LAW [CHAMBLISS]:
- 'acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representatives of the state'
- however ignores that the state has the power to make laws so the an avoid criminalising their own actions
- state can make laws that sanction harmful acts [nazis]
- SOCIAL HARMS & ZEMIOLOGY:
- michalowski: 'legally permissable acts whose consequences are those of illegal acts' (in the harm they cause)
- Hillyard: we should take a much wider view of state wrongdoing replace study of crimes with 'zemiology'- study of harm
- creates a simple standard that can be applied to different states to identify which are most harmful to human/environmental well-being
- howver what level of harm must occur before act is defined as crime?
- who decided what counts as harm?
- LABELLING & SOCIETAL REACTION:
- whether an act constitutes a crime depends on the reaction of the social audience
- state crimes = socially constructed
- what constitutes state crime varies across cultures/over time
- INTERNATIONAL LAW:
- Rothe & Mullins: any action behalf of the state the violates International la or a states own domestic law
- it uses globally agreed definitions of state crime
- HUMAN RIGHTS: - natural rights(free speech) vs civil rights (voting)
- violation of peoples basic human rights by the state/its agents
- states that practice racism, sexism or exploitation
- RISSE: virtually all states care about their human rights image because these rights are now globalised
THE CULTURE OF DENIAL
- ALVAREZ: recent years have seen growing impact of international human rights movement
- as a result Cohen argues that states that states now have to make greater efforts to conceal and justify their human rights crimes
- dictatorships deny all human rights absuses
- democratic states legitimise their actions in more complex ways('spiral of state denial)
- SKYES & MATZA: neutralisation techniques can be applied to justification of human rights abuses
- 1)DENIAL OF VICTIM
- 2) APPEAL TO HIGHER AUTHORTIY
- These techniques seek to impose a different construction of the event from what might appear to be the case
EXPLAINING STATE CRIME
-
CRIMES OF OBEDIENCE
- Crime usually defined as deviance from social norms
- however state crimes are crimes of conformity, since her require obedience to higher authority(the state/representative)
- e.g in a corrupt police unit, the officer who accepts a bribe is conforming to the units culture
- research shows many people willing to obey authority even when this involves harming others
- sociologists argue such actions are a part of a role which individuals are socilaised
- e.g according to Greene and ward, in order to overcome norms against the use of cruelty, individuals who become torturers need to become re-socialised, trained and exposed to propaganda about the 'enemy'
- Kelman & Hamilton: 3 features that produce crimes of obedience:
- AUTHORISATION: when acts are approved/prdered by those in authority, moral principle replaced by rules to obey
- ROUTINISATION: once crime has been commited, there is a strong pressure to turn the act into a routine that individuals can perform in a detached manner
- DEHUMANISATION
MODERNITY
- [BAUMAN] Key features of a modern society made the holocaust possible:
- 1)DIVISION OF LABOUR:each person responsible for just one small task so none felt personally responsible for he atrocity
- 2) BUREAUCRATISATION: normalised the killing by making it repetitive and routinely-dehumanisation
- 3) INSTRUMENTAL RATIONALITY: rational, efficient methods used to achieve a goal
- 4) SCIENCE & TECH: railways transporting victims to death camps, industriallyproduced gas to kill them
- the Holocaust = a modern, industrialised mass production factory system where the product is mass murder
- holocaust was result of very existence of modern-rational bureaucratic civilisation rather than breakdown of civilisation
- Not all genocides occur through a highly organised division of labour that allows participants to distance themselves from killing [rwandan genocide]
- ideological factors extremely important[nazism]