Criminology Essays Crime and Power

Criminology Essays Crime and PowerCriminology Crimes of the the right way.Q. Why has the digest of horrors of the all- stiff been much(prenominal) a developing domain of a function in criminology over the ago carbon?It is tempting to give a simple or even out simplistic answer to the above question it is tempting to say that abbreviation and theory of iniquitys of the almighty gather in grown so quickly in the last deoxycytidine monophosphate because the quantity and diversity of such(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) offensive activitys live themselves blow up outwards. As the number of crimes move by the compelling take a crap uprise exp peerlessntially across the years and continents, so the police forces, crime-prevention agencies and legislators of the governments charged with gimpy these crimes exact had to evolve into bigger and more complex compositions withal. For instance, amongst myriad forms of unionized crime that developed in the twentiet h century, one pertinent late example is the efflorescence of high-tech and internet crime, where professional and world(prenominal) gangs fix technology to extort or steal large sums of money from the reality. high-tech crime is of course a new phenomenon it did not subsist at the turn of the last century. Therefore compend of such activities by justness agencies has grown to respond to this new threat moreover, the analysis and prevention of such crimes has had to grow in sophistication and size just as the crimes themselves vex through. Organized crime be it narcotic trafficking, prostitution rings, corporate crimes and so on has survive a massive international business, and it has required larger agencies equipped with better wrong theory and technology and international cooperation ming take with agencies to deal with it. Moreover, the clear lapse amid the professionalism and techniques of m some(prenominal) vicious organizations and the police force agencies that pursue them will require these agencies to catch-up to the advances of these out rightfulnesss in the next decades. And, of course, this catch-up will at decennaryd heavily upon advances in twist theory and analysis.Crimes of the powerful are not exclusively concerned with smuggled activities of the above description, only when also with crimes attached by corporations, by governments, by dictators and even, in an absorbing new perspective, by patriarchal gender structures that sanction crimes of power against women. The attention of law agencies and legislators upon these crimes has led to a mass of new analysis and theory by criminologists on the nature of such crimes. Likewise, several theories compete to expound the causes of organized crime and crimes of the powerful. One such theory points to friendly change as the to the highest degree profound catalyst in the spread of organized crime and the detection of organized crime. This theory assimilates the teachings of sociology, psychology, anthropology and history to produce a detailed sociological critique of these causes. In the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, many acts committed by the powerful that would today be classified as abominable were whence merely pseudo-illegal or socially disapproved of they carried no specific savage offence. But social and legislative advances come make the prosecution of crimes of the powerful easier enact. out. For instance, the prosecution of corporate crime is, theoretically at least, far easier to recognise and follow than it was in the early twentieth century. Moreover, great media exposure of the purport of corporations and governments has magnified their crimes whenever they are committed.A moment of this essay might be given to discuss exactly what is meant by the phrase crimes of the powerful. Indeed, a psyche unfamiliar with the literature of criminology might be forgiven for regarding the term as reasonably amorphous and nebulous he might argue that nearly any criminal phenomenon could be termed a crime of the powerful. The dictionary defines a crime as an act punishable by law, as being disallow by statute or injurious to the humans welfare. An evil or injurious act an offence, a sin esp. of grave character (Oxford, 1989). It is tight to see how the word power could not be inserted into any fork of this definition and for it still to make sense. There is at that placefore in the clear b deprivation letter interpretation of the law a huge shaded area that allows for misinterpretation of the term crime of power. Can, for instance, a crime of the powerful be a physical act? Or must it the top levels of an organization? Moreover, the use of the word crime is itself ambiguous. The trafficking of doses or children is clearly illegal and criminal according to the principles of law but we also speak of corporate crimes against the public withholding medicines from the dying, adulterating foods etc., as cri mes even though they have no explicit recognition as such in law. There is then a near infinite possible prolongation of the word crime when one uses the word in the sense of something that ought to be illegal alternatively than something that is presently illegal. In Smiths words If a crime is to be dumb simply as law violation, then no matter how immoral, reprehensible, damaging or dangerous an act is, it is not a crime unless it is made such by the authorities of the state.There is moreover often the anomalous situation where a government that commits crimes of power against its people do-nothing plainly be legally recognised as doing such if it passes legislation against itself. That is their This is evidently extremely unlikely to happen and so many such crimes go unnoticed. It is often directly against the interests of genuine groups or interests to recognize the constituteence of certain crimes because then have to recognize theory legal existence also. tardily how ever, one growth of criminal analysis of the powerful has come from greater international laws that allow for the international legal recognition of crimes committed by dictators or despots when they would never do this themselves. For instance, Saddam Hussein is near universally thought to have committed crimes of power against his people such things were never legally recognized as crimes as such until a personify such as the United Nations had the international authority to declare the illegal actions of heads of states.Sociologists and psychologists amongst separate groups (Chesterton, 1997) have argued that the moral, sociological and psychological aspects of crimes of the powerful should be recognized by criminologists to a far greater extent. By using approaches such as these criminologists can add the activities of environmental pollution, insider trading, and tax evasion to the public consciousness of what constitute crimes of the powerful. In Sellins (2003) words if the study of crime is to see an objective and scientific status, it should not allow itself to be restricted to the impairment and boundaries of enquiry established by legislators and politicians .According to scholars authors like Chesterton and Dupont the intense interest in by criminologists in the analysis and prevention of crimes of the powerful is repayable to the massive growth and myriad new forms of these crimes. Perhaps the nigh powerful criminals whose crimes are explicitly illegal are international drug trafficking organizations. In 2004, according to Smith (Smith, 2004) 550 billion of cocaine and other illegal substances were transported lawlessly internationally. This trade is therefore lager than the GDP of many African and other third-world countries. Faced with this massive business and with its catastrophic social consequences traditional law agencies and their democratic legislators have had to radically alter the way they study and prosecute these crimes. The ex treme complexity and ingenuity of international drug cartels have meant that governments have had to build equally complex systems of criminological analysis and technique to nail down these crimes. Complex intelligence agencies like the MI5 and MI6 in England and the CIA and FBI in the United States flat have innumerable specialist intelligence groups of scientists, field-officers and so on analyze the criminal nature and consequences of organized crime such as drug trafficking, the shipping of illegal weapons and so on.Perhaps the only organizations on earth with greater power than the above organized crime syndicates are the international corporations of Western countries like Britain, America and so on. Many critics of these organizations (Chomsky, 2003) allege that the cryptical crimes of these corporations exceed even those of the drug barons. For instance, everyone will be familiar with the recent scandals of Enron, Anderson and Paramalat where billions of pounds were swi ndled by these massive companies. This white-collar crime was half a century ago hardly investigated and such crimes went essentially unnoticed. But greater public consciousness of the activities of these companies through the media has theoretically at least imposed a greater accountability and potential punishment for companies who exploit either their shareholders or their customers. This increased interest in corporate crime has led in turn to the need for a abundant number of criminologists to produce theories to excuse the causes of such crimes and then strategies for their prevention.A further consequence of the media revolution of the late(prenominal) century and the changed social assumptions of our hostelry has meant that the crimes of governments as crimes of power are right away open to far greater than public and professional scrutiny and analysis than they ever have been before. Twenty-four hour television and instant memory access to news stories and the daily ev ents of our political life have meant that the public can therefore criticise the crimes of their governments with greater ease than before. For instance, the vociferous protests in 2003 by citizens of Western democracies against the invasion of Iraq were due to the belief of those citizens that their governments had acted illegally and criminally in invading that country. Traditionally, such crimes do not fall into the sphere of criminology because of the legion(predicate) problems identified in the definition paragraph of this essay. However, criminologists, at least theoretically, and urged by famous opponents of the war like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore, are coming to analyze and investigate the discloses and theoretical difficulties of holding entire governments to account for committing crimes of power. Many of the principles used by criminologists to analyze the techniques and structures of organized crime yndicates are being suggested to be transferred to an analysis of the crimes of government. The analysis of government crime may prove to be one of the most fruitful of the coming decades for criminologists.In this essay then, the term crimes of the powerful refers to such crimes as are carried out by organized criminal gangs (either national or international), by corporations, by governments, by powerful individuals such as corrupt magnates, businessmen and so on. Such crimes might implicate corporate fraud, corporate mal-practise, illegal narcotics or arms high-tech crimes such as computer fraud.It is necessary for the student of criminology to k now something of the state criminal affairs at the end of the 19th century if he is to mark a clear answer for the growth of analysis of crimes of the powerful in the twentieth century. One strong reason why analysis of such crimes was less in say 1900 was that many organized crimes did not exist at all. For instance, the use of narcotics like opium and heroin were widespread amongst all levels of soc iety but legal also the trade of these drugs were controlled by legally registered companies and there existed no illegal market for their production or importation. Accordingly, since these acts were no dumb as crimes, British police did not need to analyse the demeanour or causes of these. Moreover, the size of the police force as well as its technical and theoretical know-how were far smaller than they are today in Britain, America, France and so on. Similarly, whilst many companies exploited the Victorian workforce, none did so in the systematic and pre-determined fashion that is characteristic of Anderson, Enron or Parmalat in the past ten years. Other crimes of the powerful like high-tech computer fraud ostensibly required no analysis or theory of criminology since they did not exist at all. Similarly,The In James Smiths (Smith, 1999, p44) memorable phrase At the finish up of the twenty-first century the Western world faces a plethora of arrange criminality of the like th at it has never known before. From the mass trafficking of illegal narcotics, to whole-scale prostitution, to high-tech computer fraud, to corporate offences on a giant scale, the police forces and criminal prevention agencies of the new century will meet challenges as they have never glimpsed in the past. And, a little further on, They will no longer compete against petty or isolated crimes of individuals, but against the in advance(p) and organized attempts to make vast fortunes by systematically breaking the law. In this contest between law officer and criminal former is now far behind it remains to be seen whether he will catch-up in the near decades (Smith, 1999, p44).Another area of rapid growth in crimes of the powerful has been the feminist critique of domestic furiousness committed against women by preponderating males. Feminists of the last few decades have argued cogently that the term crimes of the powerful should include also these domestic abuses because of the patr iarchal structures within our society that promote such abuses. The blowup of such feminist critiques flows from the fact that before this century there was no feminism as such, and domestic abuse was either not considered a crime or it was publicly invisible or ignored. The changing social philosophies such as liberalism and attitudes of the twentieth century gave birth to a greater consciousness for women and therefore greater demands for them for social and legal equality. This, in the mid-sixties and 1970s, leading feminists like Germane Greer campaigned for recognition of the domination of women by social institutions and conventions that are massively weighted in favour of men. Feminists scholars and theorists argue that the vast majority of these structures and the crimes they inflict upon women are unreported marital rape is the most frequent abuse, and nearly 80% of women in this predicament are handle repeatedly (Painter, 1991). A whole host of crimes commited by men b ack up by social institutions go unreported and unprosecuted. or so feminists therefore describe a fundamental imbalance in the power structures of Western society, and that agencies and organizations should be set up to combat and prevent this crime. In S. Griffins words workforce in our culture are taught and encouraged to rape women as the emblematical expression of male power (Griffin, 1971) and Brownmiller says eloquently that rapists are the shock army of patriarchy, necessary for male domination. Some men may not rape, but only because their power over women is already secured by the rapists who have done their work for them (Brownmiller, 1976). This feminine critique therefore demands a considerable extension of the definition of the term crimes of the powerful to include all those thousands of incidents of unseen violence issued from an entire gender that has power over another. In this sense, arguably feminists have uncovered the crime of the powerful of all. According to feminists, the truths of this oppression has been recognised part by criminological theorists by the tides of social legislation that have been passed in recent years to protect women from domestic violence. Nonetheless, say that criminologists yet lack a complete or detailed analytical theory of such violence this itself being reflected by the dominance in criminology of males.In the last(a) analysis, the growth of the analysis of crimes of the powerful may be attributed principally to the growth of the number and types of such crimes and the subsequent need to investigate and prevent them. Some crimes of the powerful such as drug trafficking are nearly altogether new to our age, and criminologists have had to develop wholly new theories and techniques to combat it. On the other hand, entirely new academic critiques like those of feminism, sociology and psychology have identified and produced theories to describe invisible crimes of power against groups who before the last c entury had to suffer in silence. Criminologists too have had to swallow these theories and then necessitate methods and techniques to apply them to our modern world. Similarly, the rise of mass media and the extension of democratic institutions have enabled citizens with far better information about the behaviour of their corporations and governments this awareness has in turn led to a consciousness of the similarity of nature between illegal crimes like drug-smuggling and corporate crimes like deliberately withholding medicines from the frame or the invasion of a foreign country. These new fields of probe have given the criminologist much to think about. The student of criminology should not depart either that the subject he studies had itself evolved over the last century to become a highly professional and international and therefore capable of greater levels and specializations in analysis than it could ever have been before.BIBLIOGRAPHY Academic Books, Journals Articles Br ownmiller, S (1976). Against our exit Men, Women and Rape. James Press, London. Chesterton, B. (1997). Criminology and friendly Science. Blackthorn, Edinburgh. Dupont, D. 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