Globalisation and Crime

Globalisation and Crime

1. Increasing interconnectedness of societies

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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)