Nation states and large corporations have the power to inflict serious damage onto citizens, other countries and the environment. Yet often, these go unrevealed or unpunished. Some of these behaviours take us beyond the boundaries of traditional criminology into zemilogy (the study of harms) This is because not all of these acts are considered illegal, yet the still injure humans or the environment. Some crimes/harms are without borders (they have no respect for national boundaries).
The global criminal economy
Held et all: there has been a globalisation of crime, increasing interconnectedness of crime across national borders. This increases the spread of transnational crime which is crime between nations; one gang in one country that has links with gangs in other countries that are also engaging in the same crime.
Globalisation has many causes, including the spread of new ICT and the influence of global mass media, cheap air travel and the deregulation of financial and other markets.
Castells argues that there is a global criminal economy worth over £1 trillion per annum. This takes many forms including trafficking arms and nuclear materials, smuggling illegal immigrants, trafficking women and children, sex tourism, cybercrime, green crime and terrorism. The drug trade is worth an estimate $300-$400 billion annually at street prices. Money laundering of the profits from organised crime is estimated at $1.5 trillion annually.
Globalisation has many causes, including the spread of new ICT and the influence of global mass media, cheap air travel and the deregulation of financial and other markets.
Global risk consciousness
Globalisation creates new insecurities or ‘risk consciousness’. Risk is now seen as global rather than tied to particular places e.g. economic migrants and asylum seekers fleeing persecution have given rise to anxieties in Western Countries.
Globalisation, capitalism and crime
From a Marxist perspective, Taylor argues that globalisation has led to greater inequality. Transnational corporations (TNCs) can now switch manufacturing to lower wage counties to gain higher profits, producing job insecurity, unemployment and poverty. This has produced rising crime and new patterns of crime. Among the poor, greater insecurity encourages people to turn to crime. Globalisation creates large scale criminal opportunities. Deregulations of financial markets creates opportunities for insider trading and tax evasion. New employment patterns create new opportunities for crime, using subcontracting to recruit flexible workers, often working illegally.
Crimes of globalisation
Rothe argues that the IMF (International Monetary Fund) commits crime of globalisation by imposing pro-capitalist structural adjustment programmes on poor countries, requiring them to cut public spending and causing unemployment.