1. Immediate activity Gilroy says that black criminality is a myth- why?
Why does Heidensohn argues that women don’t commit crime?
Cloward and Ohlin state that are three subculturs- what are they?

2. Human rights and state crime
State crimes involve crimes committed by a government such as war crimes, genocide , torture; the illegal treatment, imprisonment or punishment of citizens; corrupt or criminal policing; corruption; state-sponsored terrorism and other violations of human rights. According to Green & Ward they are:
‘illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies to further state policies.’
Marxists view state crimes as ‘crimes of the powerful’ that should be investigated.

3. THE SCALE OF STATE CRIME THE STATE IS THE SOURCE OF LAW
State crime is perhaps the most serious form of crime for two reasons:
THE SCALE OF STATE CRIME
According to Michalowski & Kramer (2006) – the power of the state makes large-scale crime possible…’great power and great crimes are inseparable’.
The state has the potential to cause major harm but it can also hide crimes and escape punishment. It is estimated that 262 million people have been murdered by governments during the 20th century (remember that this figure is invalid – as we will never really know the true figure).
Media reporting focuses on state crimes in 3rd world countries rather than countries like the UK and USA.
THE STATE IS THE SOURCE OF LAW
The state is able to define what is criminal, uphold the law and prosecute offenders. It can hide/conceal crimes, evade punishments and even avoid defining its own actions as criminal.
It is hard for foreign countries to intervene due to state sovereignty and national boundaries.
Whilst it is clear that many countries ignore international conventions. Racial discrimination, genocide and war crimes are all common place.

4. McLaughlin (2012) 4 categories of state crime
Political crimes – corruption and censorship
Crimes by security/police forces – genocide, torture, disappearance of dissidents (a person who opposes official policy)
Economic crimes – official violations of health & safety laws e.g. flooding
Social & Cultural crimes – institutional racism – e.g. the police as an agency of the state (MacPherson Report)

5. Sociology behind the headlines
Enes Kanter: 'I don't feel safe in the UK‘
NBA star Enes Kanter should be looking forward to coming to play basketball in London next week.
Instead, he says he'll be staying in the USA - for fear of assassination in the UK.
The 26-year-old New York Knicks centre explained to Radio 1 Newsbeat why he's cancelled his appearance at the O2 arena on 17 January.
"The Turkish government is obsessed with me," he said over the phone from his New York base.
"I speak out against President Erdogan, and so I don't feel safe.
Read the article on Turkey and identify the categories of state crime occurring

6. Examples of state crimes
Genocide.
This involves the attempted elimination by mass murder of people belonging to a particular ethnic, national or religious group, and is normally carried out by state action or with its support. Hitler’s Nazi regime murdered 6 million Jews between 1933 and In the Rwanda genocide in 1994, an estimated 500,000 – 1,000,000 people from the Tutsi minority were killed by the majority Hutu people in a period of around 100 days.
Torture and illegal treatment or punishment of citizens.
By 2012, the UK Ministry of Defence had paid out £14 million in compensation and costs to hundreds of Iraqis who complained that they were illegally detained and tortured by British forces following the invasion of Iraq in The US still holds prisoners at the US Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba who have been subjected to torture, and have not been charged with any offence or given a trial.

7. Immediate activity

8. Examples of state crimes
Assassination or ‘targeted killing’, which have been used as instruments of state power.
The Russian state is widely believed to be behind the 2006 murder by radiation poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London.
State-sponsored terrorism.
This involves the state itself carrying out terrorist acts or supporting others that do.
The US has a long history of supporting illegal rebel groups against elected regimes it regards as unfriendly, particularly in Central and South America.

9. Examples of state-corporate crimes
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (2010) is an example of a state-facilitated corporate crime (this occurs when states fail to regulate and control corporate behaviour, making crime easier).
The explosion and sinking of the rig, owned by BP, led to the death of 11 workers and caused the largest accidental oil spill in history – with major health, environmental and economic impacts.
The official enquiry found the corporations liable in terms of the decisions that they had made but also the government as regulators had failed to oversee the industry adequately or notice the companies’ cost-cutting decisions.
The Challenger space shuttle disaster (1986)
A state-initiated corporate crime (when the state initiates, directs or approves corporate crimes). State agency NASA and the corporation Morton Thiokol had made risky, negligent and cost-cutting decisions which led to the explosion that killed 7 astronauts 73 seconds after blast-off. (Kramer 1992).

10. CRIMES COMMITTED DURING WAR OR ITS AFTERMATH
WAR CRIMES…two kinds
ILLEGAL WARS
KEY POINT - under international law, in all cases other than self-defence, war can only be declared by the UN Security Council.
EXAMPLE: Afghanistan and Iran
The US led wars on these two countries in the name of the ‘war on terror’ (following 9/11) are viewed by many as illegal.
Kramer and Michalowski (2005) argue that the war in Iraq was justified on the basis of self-defence by the USA and UK governments, who knowingly made the false claim that the Iraqis possessed weapons of mass destruction.
CRIMES COMMITTED DURING WAR OR ITS AFTERMATH
EXAMPLE: torture of prisoners during the Iraq War in Abu Ghraib prison with 9 soldiers convicted.
EXAMPLE: indiscriminate and often deliberate bombings of civilians in Syria – Kramer argues that terror bombing has become ‘normalised’ since the 1930s.

11. The problem of studying crimes of the state
It is difficult to define ‘state crime’ and a number of different approaches have been suggested.
DOMESTIC LAW
Chambliss (1989) – state crimes are ‘acts defined in law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representatives of the state’.
HOWEVER, using a state’s own domestic law to define state law is inadequate. It ignores the fact that states have the power to make laws and so they can avoid criminalising their own actions. Furthermore, they can make laws allowing them to carry out harmful acts.
EXAMPLE: the German Nazi state passed a law permitting it to compulsorily sterilise the disabled.

12. Immediate activity Define the term zeminology Define the term anomie
Define the term innovators
Define the term secondary deviance
Define the term intuitionally racist.

13. The problem of studying crimes of the state
LABELLING AND SOCIETAL REACTION
State crime is ‘socially constructed’ – what is regarded as state crime changes over time and between cultures or groups.
How a sociologist defines state crime may not be how the participants (perpetrators, victims and audience) define the situation. They also may be manipulated by ruling-class ideology. For e.g. the media may persuade the public to see a war as legitimate rather than criminal.
INTERNATIONAL LAW
Some sociologists cite law that has been created through treaties and agreements between states, such as the Geneva and Hague conventions on war crimes on which to base their definition of state crime.
Adopting a globally agreed definition, it avoids researcher bias and international law has been intentionally designed to deal with state crime, unlike most domestic law.
HOWEVER, international law is a social construction involving the use of power which governments can use to their advantage whilst it is also tends to focus largely on war crimes/crimes against humanity, rather than other state crimes such as corruption.

14. Using Human Rights to define state crime
Green and Ward (2012): universal human rights have now become global social norms, and nearly all countries in the world now have to pay at least lip-service to human rights otherwise it makes them susceptible to ‘shaming’.
O’Byrne (2012): states are increasingly assessed by the extent to which they preserve human rights, and by the extent to which they fail to do so through injustice, discrimination, torture, violence, slavery or genocide.
Natural rights – these are what people are regarded as having simply by virtue of existing i.e. rights to life, liberty and free speech
Civil rights – these are rights, like the right to vote, privacy, liberty and education
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) has established a legal framework for defining and enforcing universal human rights.

15. A transgressive approach: state crime as a violation of human rights
The Schwendingers (1975), supported more recently by Green and Ward (2012) argue that we should define state crime in terms of the violation of human rights by the state or its agents rather than the breaking of rules.
If a state practises racism or sexism or economically exploits its citizens, it is violating human rights and should be guilty of a crime.
This human rights dimension puts the study of state crime within a wider context of social harm rather than as simply law breaking, so things like induced famine, the denial of basic welfare services as a result of state corruption and other deliberate denials of basic human rights are state crimes.
A sociologist’s role should be to defend human rights – a transgressive approach needs to be adopted, going beyond the traditional boundaries of criminology, which are defined by criminal law.
HOWEVER – S. Cohen some acts such as economic exploitation, which though morally unacceptable, are not self-evidently criminal. Also we have to question what is a human right.
Herman and Julia

16. Immediate activity What is meant by: Globalisation Focal concerns
Relative deprivation

17. Explaining state crime
Sociologists have attempted to understand atrocities like genocides which involve law-abiding citizens carrying out barbaric attacks on men, women and children.
State crimes are crimes of obedience – as they require obedience to a higher authority – the state or its representative. Research suggests that many people are willing to obey authority even when this involves harming others. Sociologists argue that such actions are part of a role into which individuals are socialised.

18. The Ten mark question ITEM A
In common with other ‘crimes of the powerful‘, state crime is not easy to define and sociologists have looked beyond conventional definitions of crime. Some sociologists have defined state crime in an international rather than national context, while others have seen it in relation to a higher moral context. Other sociologists have gone beyond the usual definition of crime as law-breaking by seeing state crime in terms of the damage states can cause.
Applying material from Item A, analyse TWO ways in which state crime can be defined. (10 marks)
You could analyse state crime in terms of harm (zeminology).
Definition: Hillyard
Eval: Analysis of significance, prevents stares ruling themselves out of court but a vague and subjective concept
You could analyse state crime in terms of human rights violations.
Definition: Herman and Julia Schwendinger and Green and Ward
Eval: Risse (positive)
Cohen, Walter and Zizek (additional reading) (negative)
You could look at the international context in which ‘state crime’ is defined. i.e. through the use of international law
Definition by: Rothe and Mullins
Eval: Strand and Tuman

19. Immediate activity No notes, no text books rearrange to find the connections and work out what connects the them
Status Frustration
Boundary maintenance
Primary deviance
Act of rebellion or act of action with no choice
Can only explain reaction to deviance not the cause
Cohen
Adaptation and change
Lemart
Capitalism
Excitement
Drug takers ‘hippies’study
Durkheim
Reaffirming social solidarity through social reaction
Maintaining the false consciousness
Criminal, Conflict, Retreatist
White collar crime

20. Exam question
Outline three way in which sociologists define state crime (6 marks)
If the action of the state or agents of the state breaks its own domestic laws and so their actions are viewed as illegal
If the actions of the state or agents of the state break international law and so are viewed as illegal if they do break the countries domestic law.
If the actions of the state or agent of the state cause social harm (zeminology) they can be viewed as a state crime even if they don’t break any specific laws.
If the actions of the state or agents of the state violate the declaration of human rights for an individual or group they can be viewed as criminal even if they don’t break any specific laws.

21. The second element to analysing state crime
So far we have looked at how state crime is defined by sociologists
The next thing we need to consider is how is state crime allowed to happen? How do states and individuals working on behalf of the state justify their actions to themselves and others

22. Immediate activity No notes, no discussion, no text books
This morning we identified 3 sociological perspectives, now answer the following questions about each one
Functionalism
1)Identify two ways in which crime and deviance may have positive functions
Labelling (interactionist) theory
2) Lemert argues that ‘social control leads to deviance’ what does he mean by this?
Subcultural theory
3)What is meant by status frustration?
Marxism
4) Identify three ways in which capitalism can be said to be criminogenic

23. Mark your work
1)Boundary maintenance – reinforcing norms and values for the majority; adaptation – facilitating social change; safety‐valve, warning of a societal malfunction.
2)Once a person is labeled as deviant by the police, media or people around them this label becomes a part of their self‐concept (how they view themselves) and they are more likely to turn to deviance again, this is secondary deviance
3)The feeling created when individuals find their access to legitimate means of achieving status isblocked.
4) It produces poverty, so the poor turn to crime to meet their basic needs;
advertising fuels the desire for goods that people cannot afford
capitalism encourages success at all costs among the bourgeoisie (business owners)
it produces alienation among workers, which may be expressed in violent or antisocialbehaviour.

24. The 3 sociological explanations of state crime
Kelman and Hamilton
Bauman
Cohen

25. THE CRIMES OF OBEDIENCE MODEL
Explaining state crimes Integrated theory & the crimes of obedience model
Studied My Lai massacre in Vietnam – 400 civilians killed by American soldie rs.
THE CRIMES OF OBEDIENCE MODEL
This model developed by KELMAN AND HAMILTON (1989) emphasises conformity to rules.
They identify 3 ways that violent states encourage obedience even when the acts may be personally considered as deviant and immoral.
Authorisation. Making it clear to individuals they are acting in accordance with official policy, and with explicit state authority and support.
Dehumanisation. Involves state’s promotion of a monolithic (single and inflexible) cultural identity, which is based on the marginalisation and social exclusion of minorities, who are portrayed as a sub-human species to whom normal rules of behaviour do not apply, which enables state discrimination, atrocities, torture and genocide to become acceptable to ordinary people.
Routinisation. The organisation of actions in such as way that they become part of a regular routine, creating places or situations where state violence is encouraged a, and rewarded, and which the perpetrators of violence can then afterwards leave, returning to an everyday life where ordinary social norms prevail.

26. Applying the crimes of obedience model to the Holocaust
Bauman (1989) suggests the Holocaust – the Nazi genocide of the Jews – was made possible by the 3 processes identified in the obedience model and represented a break-down of modern civilization and a return to pre-modern violence and extreme cruelty.
For those who carried out the crimes in the death camps, it was turned into a state-approved routine administrative task (bureaucratisation). Each person was responsible for one small task (division of labour) with instrumental rationality – where rational, efficient methods were used to achieve a goal, in this case, murder. This made people consider think about achieving a target rather than the reality of killing a person
It involved the detached application of modern science and technology to the mass destruction of an ethnic group defined as sub-human with railways transporting victims to the death camps where they were killed with industrially produced gas. Thousands of people were employed in the mass industry of death, very few would have associated their day to day factory job with the death of millions

27. Evaluation
It has to be noted that not all genocides occur during highly organised division of labour e.g. the Rwandan genocide was carried out directly by large angry groups of everyday citizens.
Ideological factors are also important – as with the Nazi ideology, it stressed a single, German racial identity that excluded minorities who were defined as inferior/sub-human. Therefore, it was racist ideology that provided the motivation to carry the Holocaust though the modern, rational division of labour provided the means.
So the ideology was the driving force behind it but modern technology and the division of labour made it possible.

28. Techniques of neutralization
Cohen (2001) applies Matza’s techniques of neutralization to explain how states can deny they have committed serious breaches of human rights.
Deny their victims – by labelling them as terrorists or extremists who have no regard for human life or human rights.
They deny injury – or damage by saying the ‘other side’ started it so ‘we are the real victims, not them’.
Deny responsibility – by saying they were simply following orders or doing their duty. This is often used by individual policemen, death camp guards etc.
Condemning the condemners – ‘they are condemning us only because of their anti- Semitism (Israeli version), their
Appeal to higher loyalties – e.g. the need to stop ruthless terrorists from massacring innocent people.
These techniques do not deny that the event has occurred. This enables states to provide the necessary excuses and justifications to explain their human rights breaches to themselves, to those who actually carry out the acts, and to other countries in the rest of the world who might seek to condemn them for it.
On its ‘war on terror’ the USA justified its coercive interrogation practices which included hooding, shaking, sleep deprivation and ‘water boarding’ which they are argued were not torture but merely induced stress. Cohen sees this as a neutralisation technique aimed at normalising torture.

29. State crime and the culture of denial in democracies
S. Cohen sees human rights and state crime as increasingly important because of the growing impact of human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and the focus in criminology on victims.
While dictatorships simply deny human rights abuses, democracies have to legitimate their actions in complex ways:
Stage 1
‘It didn’t happen’, this works until the media uncover evidence that it did.
Stage 2
‘If it did happen, it is something else’ – the state argues that it was self-defence and not murder.
Stage 3
‘Even if it is what you say it is, its justified’ we had to do it e.g. the ‘war on terror’.

30. Problems of researching state crimes Why is it difficult for sociologists to find out the ‘truth’?
Cohen: it is difficult to find the true extent of state crime because governments adopt strategies of denial to either deny or justify their actions, or reclassify them as something else.
As state crimes are carried out by powerful people, using a huge number of state agencies, this state secrecy means that there are no official statistics or victim surveys to show the extent of such crimes.
Sociologists have to rely on secondary data like media reports, this means that state crimes committed by Western democracies, such as the UK and US are largely ignored.
Furthermore, sociologists may face strong official resistance as states can threaten, refuse funding and deny access to officials/official documents. Therefore, investigating state crime can be both difficult and dangerous.

31. crime and globalisation
Your task
State crime comes under the spec heading of
crime and globalisation
Under this heading you need to ensure that you are confident not just in answering questions about state crime but also globalisation and crime, green crime.
To re cap this knowledge complete the quick check questions on page 141.