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State Crime - Coggle Diagram
State Crime
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War crimes
Illegal wars: war can only be declared by the UN Security Council therefore many US-led wars like in Afghanistan and Iraq are illegal.
Crimes committed during war or its aftermath: Kramer and Michalowski identify crimes committed during the Iraq war, including torture of prisoners. A US military inquiry into Abu Ghraib found numerous instances of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses'. Nine soldiers were convicted.
Crime of obedience
State crimes are crimes of conformity, since they require obedience to a higher authority. Many people are willing to obey authority even if it harms others.
Green and Ward argue to overcome norms against the use of cruelty, individuals must become re-socialised, trained and exposed roti propaganda about the enemy.
Kelman and Hamilton identify 3 general features that produce crimes of obedience:
Authorisation (when acts are ordered or approved by those in authority, normal moral principles are replaced by the duty to obey)
e.g. the law at the time said that none of the awful acts in modern eyes were illegal.
Routinisation (once the crime has been committed, there is a strong pressure to turn the act into a routine that individuals can perform in a detached manner.)
e.g. shifts happen in a routine way like train drivers
Dehumanisation (The the enemy is portrayed as sub-human, normal principles of morality don't apply).
e.g. propaganda being presented as evil
Case study: Oskar Groening- got trialed in 2015 for being a 'criminal' during the nazi revolution. He took in the information of people, therefore he was just following orders?
Bauman: argues certain key features that allowed the holocaust to happen.
1) a division of labour (each person had one small role so felt that personally they were not responsible.
2) Bureaucratisation (normalised the killing by making it repetitive)
3) Instrumental rationality (rational methods were used to achieve the goal)
e.g. concentration camps designed like factories of death, number on people, prison uniforms, wearing a star symbol
4) Science and technology (railways transported victims, gas killed them. People felt they weren't doing it)
e.g. those who had interesting genetics had experiments done to make the aryan race stronger
EVALUATION: Nazi ideology separated people like the Jews meaning they didn't get treated to normal standards or morality.
Some killing was direct meaning people couldn't separate themselves from it.
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Integrated theory
Green and Ward: state crime arises from simile circumstances to those of other crimes, like street crime
integrating 3 factors and how these factors interact generate state crimes:
- Opportunities
- Failure of controls
- Motivation of offenders
The authoritarian personality (Adorno et al)- includes the willingness to obey the orders of superiors without question