Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Globalisation and Crime
- Increasing interconnectedness of societies
- Global criminal
economy
- Castells (1998) – global
criminal economy is
now worth over £1
trillion per annum
- Arms trafficking, Trafficking
women and children, Sex
tourism, Green crimes,
Trafficking endangered
species
- There is a demand and
supply side
- Scale of transnational crime is due to
demand for its products and services in the
West
- But could not function without the
supply side that provides the drugs
and sex workers
- Afghanistan has a large population
of people in poverty – drug
cultivation is an attractive option
that requires little technology and
commands high prices
- Colombia – 20% of
population depends on
cocaine production –
outsells all other exports
- Global risk consciousness
- Globalisation creates new
insecurities and produces a new
mentality of “risk consciousness”
- e.g. increased movement of people
(migrants seeking work or asylum
seekers) has caused anxieties of
people the West about the risks of
crime and the need to protect
borders
- Knowledge about risks comes from
media (can question validity of source as
views can be exaggerated) – e.g.
immigration – media has created moral
panics about the threat as they are
portrayed as terrorists – leads to hate
crimes against miniorities in Europe
- Result
- Intensification of social
control – toughening
borders (fine airlines if
passengers don’t have
documents)
- No legal limits of how long a
person can be held in
immigration detention
- CCTV and thermal imaging devices
- Increased attempts at international
cooperation – ‘wars’ on terror and
drugs – increased since 9/11
- Globalisation, capitalism
and crime
- Ian Taylor (1997) –
globalisation has led to a
change in patterns and
extent of crime
- Free rein of market forces =
great inequalities and rise of
crime
- Globalisation has
created crime and both
ends
- TNCs switch manufacturing to
low-wage countries –
unemployment, poverty =
crime
- Causes governments
to have little control
over economy
- Marketization has caused people to
see themselves as individual
consumers – undermines social
cohesion
- Left realists – increasing the
materialistic culture – causes
relative deprivation which leads to
crime
- Also creates criminal opportunities on a grand
scale for elites
- Deregulation of financial markets –
insider trading and movements of
funds to avoid taxation - Creation of
EU – fraudulent claims for subsides –
estimated $7 billion per annum in EU
- Useful in linking global trends but does
not explain how the changes make
people behave in criminal ways – not
all poor people commit crime
- Patterns of
criminal
organisation
- Hobbes and Dunningham –
the way crime is organised is
linked to economic changes
brought by globalisation
- Individuals with contacts acting as a ‘hub’
around which a loose-knit network forms
- Contrasts with large scale
‘mafia’ style criminal
organisations
- ‘Glocal’ Organisations: New
forms of organisation
sometimes have
international links (drugs
trade) but crime is still
rooted in its local context
- locally based with
global connections
- Changes associated with
globalisation has led to
changes in the patterns
of crime
- However – not clear
that these patterns are
new or that the old
ones have disappeared
- McMafia: Glenny
(2008)
- Refers to organisations that emerged in
Russia and E. Europe following the fall of
communism and breakdown of the Soviet
Union (1989) – origins of transnational crime
(coincided with deregulation of global
markets)