Global Crime and Justice

David A. Jenks, John Randolph Fuller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315439549
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Cultural Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Global Crime and Justice offers a truly transnational examination of both deviance and social controls around the world. Unlike comparative textbooks detailing the criminal justice systems of a few select nations, or cataloging types of international crimes that span multiple legal jurisdictions, Global Crime and Justice provides a critical and integrated investigation into the nature of crime and how different societies react to it. The book first details various types of international crime, including genocide, war crimes, international drug and weapons smuggling, terrorism, slavery, and human trafficking. The second half covers international law, international crime control, the use of martial law, and the challenges of balancing public order with human and civil rights.

Global Crime and Justice is suitable for use in criminology and criminal justice departments, as well as in political science, international relations, and global studies programs. It will appeal to all who seek an academically rigorous and comprehensive treatment of the international and transnational issues of crime and social order.

Chapter 1

Global Crime in Context

Defining and Measuring Global Crime

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1.Define comparative crime, international crime, and transnational crime.

2.Recall the use of victimization surveys and self-report surveys.

3.List the ways that an individual can be discriminated against.

4.Describe police discretion.

AS we look around the world, we witness a vast array of individual, corporate, and state criminal activity that is varied in its scope, intensity, and effect upon society. The amount and variety of global crime is immense, and in order to fully appreciate its dimensions, we must impose certain definitions and perspectives. Two of the most important variables to understand are the influences of culture and globalization on the causes of and responses to crime around the world. Although it may be difficult to comprehend why such crime persists decade after decade, the search for these answers uncovers a challenging and fascinating tapestry of criminal activity.

Although culture and globalization are inextricably linked in the production of global crime, each issue is worthy of individual consideration for several reasons. First, culture forms the pattern of laws, technology, religion, and other social institutions and economic structures that largely determine how each of us understands the world. Only by examining the influence of culture on the reasons why individuals and groups commit crime can criminal justice policies be crafted at national and international levels. Culture is such a pervasive and all-encompassing influence that we often do not realize how powerful it is. People often take their cultures for granted and tend to believe that their own culture is the best, the right, the normal, and the most morally superior culture. This type of ethnocentrism—the evaluation of other cultures according to ideas originating from one’s own culture—afflicts not only individuals, but also governments. Therefore, the cultural connections that link crime among and between countries are key to understanding the underlying factors that foster global crime.

A second reason for considering globalization and culture separately is because globalization has a devastating effect on culture. The power of the global economic engine seeks to assimilate cultures into a general global society. Some assimilation is necessary in order to entertain international trade. For instance, the language of air-traffic controllers throughout the world is English. Although the bulk of the global aviation industry is free to run its operations in its local languages, those who decide where airplanes fly internationally and those who fly them are required to converse in English for the safety of all.¹

This process of globalization affects all manner of crime. Its reach extends from one continent to another and makes everyone a potential victim. For instance, global white-collar crime is so pervasive that the conventional wisdom among accountants is that there is no completely safe place in the world to do business, and executives must accept this as a risk that they must manage.² It is useful to focus on the influences of globalization and culture separately because this allows us to understand their individual contributions to crime and appreciate how the interaction between them promotes a new worldwide level of crime. Crime at the local level may support an underground local economy that is free of taxes, environmental regulations, and economic transparency. When crime goes global, however, dealing with it becomes even more problematic. For example, organized international retail crime is rife with black-market thievery, employee theft, shoplifting, and gift-card fraud. The resulting black market is worth billions of dollars.³

Finally, we will look at attempts to measure the amount of crime around the world. It is difficult to understand a subject without measuring it, and global crime is a most difficult thing to measure. Not all countries record national crime statistics; of those that do, not all will publicize those statistics. The problem of measuring crime that occurs between countries is even more acute. For numerous reasons, there is no transnational crime-reporting system that records, on a regular basis, statistics on the crime that occurs between and among countries.

To begin, we will review many of the terms that are commonly used to refer to global crime. Some of these are used interchangeably, so it is useful to examine these terms to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the global effects of crime and the response to it.

WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY GLOBAL CRIME?

For the purposes of this book, the terms “global crime” and “global justice” are used in a comprehensive and inclusive manner. This expansive definition has both advantages and disadvantages. The primary advantage is that this inclusive perspective covers most global crime. This allows us not only to make comparisons between countries, but also to examine the idea that crime is country-specific. It may be more useful to think of global crime as part of a vast network of criminal organizations rather than thinking of particular countries or peoples as being responsible for criminal activity. For example, in discussing transnational organized crime, crime perpetrated by highly organized groups between and among countries, American criminologist Jay Albanese cautions against falling into the “ethnicity trap” in which ethnic status is used to describe criminal activity. According to Albanese: “It fails to explain the existence of the activity itself and often comes perilously close to racial and ethnic stereotyping.”⁴ A review of terms that refer to global crime and justice in this book is a good place to begin developing appreciation for the complexity of our task.

■Comparative crime. Comparative crime is the measure of how crime varies across countries. This is useful information because crime trends in one country may influence neighboring countries or even countries across the world. The main principle that comparative criminology demonstrates is that crime is not equally distributed across the globe. Some countries, such as the United States, have extremely high murder rates, whereas other countries, such as Japan, have low murder rates. The study of comparative crime delves into the reasons for such a wide variation in crime and, more importantly, what public policies will be successful in lowering crime rates.

■Comparative criminal justice systems. It is not only crime that varies radically across national boundaries, but also society’s response to it. Variations in the response to crime exist in specifications of crime (laws), resources to control crime (law enforcement officers, courts, and prisons), and the professionalism of criminal justice practitioners (which involves training, levels of corruption, and political will). The central message that can be discerned from the study of comparative criminal justice systems is that it makes a big difference where one breaks the law. Some countries are particularly effective in detecting crime, and some are particularly severe in punishing it. For example, not only are alcohol-control laws different in Tehran, Iran, than in New York City, United States, the ramifications for violating them are different, as well.

■Transnational crime. Transnational crime involves criminal activity by individuals or groups that crosses country borders. Like domestic crime, transnational crime has a motive of personal gain and profit. It is useful to think of transnational crime as having three objectives: provision of illicit goods, provision of illicit services, and the infiltration of business or government operations.⁵ According to this definition, transnational crime involves more than a few drug smugglers or credit card thieves. A great deal, but not all, of transnational crime is related to organized crime.⁶ These criminal organizations work in several countries to exploit the variations in how countries define and respond to crime.

■International crime. International crime is crime committed by one country against another, by a country’s government against civilians, or by a militant group against civilians, and typically consists of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression.⁷ International crime differs from transnational crime in terms of motive. Whereas the motive of transnational crime is personal gain and profit, the motive for international crime is more likely to be religious hatred or political advantage. International crimes include genocide and terrorism, as well as human rights violations. Included in our definition of international crime are criminal behaviors that are committed not only by organized criminal enterprises, but also by countries. The world is replete with examples of politicians and leaders engaging in efforts to kill rival groups. One need only look at recent examples in Syria, Libya, and the Sudan to see instances in which government leaders overstepped the bounds of international law and civilized behavior and oppressed their own people.

These definitions are useful in helping to distinguish between various types of criminal activity that happens both within and across nations. Now that we have established the parameters of this inquiry, it is time to concentrate on what we have identified as the two main viewpoints that we will use to explore global crime: culture and globalization. These two viewpoints represent the contributions that both globalization and individual cultures make to crime. Crime cannot be understood without an appreciation for a society’s culture, and globalization often produces a conflict, or even cooperation, between cultures that provides opportunities for crime.

CRIME AND CULTURE

Culture is not just a reflection of the way people live. Culture is the combination of patterns that dictate the etiquette, norms, rules, and laws by which people live. Culture is expressed in various ways in many aspects of our lives. For instance there is organizational culture, institutional culture, generational culture, corporate culture, gender culture, national culture, and so on. We are concerned here with the various cultures in a society that can influence crime and how a society responds to that crime.

Looking at various types of cultures within a society is one thing, but it gets more complicated when we start comparing one culture to another. One useful framework for doing this is to employ social psychologist Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, which states that a society’s culture affects its members’ values and that these values relate to behavior.⁸ This theoretical framework describes six dimensions by which cultures differ.⁹ For instance, culture has been shown to affect how a country’s citizens perceive fairness in international relations.¹⁰ By understanding how other cultures differ, it is possible to become more effective in a broad range of international interactions such as trade. Let’s look at these six dimensions of national culture and speculate upon how they could be related to criminal activity.

1.Power distance index. This is a measure of how individuals in society perceive the distribution of power within that society. If individuals perceive high inequality, they are more likely to accept traditional social order in the family and political institutions. If individuals perceive low inequality, then they are more likely to believe power relations to be more democratic. The power distance index is useful in the study of crime by analyzing how distribution of power within a society relates to the type and frequency of domestic crime. Additionally, when considering transnational crime and international crime, the power distance index is useful for understanding variations in how individuals view the legitimacy of international law.

2.Individualism versus collectivism. Each of us is integrated into...