NCJ Number
230910
Date Published
2010
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This chapter proposes preliminary and partial definitions of "state" and "crime" as understood in the term "state crime."
Abstract
The chapter begins with a discussion of the features of "crime," with a preliminary presumption that government activity is involved, although the discussion of the meaning of "state" in referring to "state crime" occupies the second part of the chapter. One theory of crime is called "juridical," which is violation of law constructed through governmental legislative action. Juridical crime can involve the violation of national laws, proscriptive international law, multilateral treaty obligation, and prescriptive human rights law. "Crime," with reference to the state can also involve "deviance," which refers to a harmful act by an organization in pursuit of organizational (governmental) goals. The act violates established norms of conduct and is attended by a supportive constituency willing to sanction the offender for the conduct in question. A third behavioral feature that may be encompassed in the term "crime" involves "social injury." This consists of intentional human actions in pursuit of political and/or economic goals that result in harms whose impact matches acts formally defined as crime in the law. Models for defining "state crime" under these three definitional theories of crime are reviewed for their strengths and weaknesses. A review of concepts of the "state" as understood in "state crime" includes a model offered by the chapter's author and a colleague (Ron Kramer) in the 1990s. They offer the concept of state-corporate crime, which facilitates examinations of how institutions of governance and economic enterprise interact to produce violations of law and/or regulation, as well as social injuries that fall outside of legal parameters but still produce human suffering. Other models for the state relevant to "state crime" are also reviewed. 3 tables and 2 notes