INTRODUCTION

Author(s): Penny Green and Tony Ward

Source: The British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 45, No. 4 (JULY 2005), pp. 431-433
Published by: Oxford University Press
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doi:10.1093/bjc/azi030 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL. (2005) 45, 431-433

INTRODUCTION

Penny Green and Tony Ward*

This special issue is devoted to state crime—i.e. to illegal or deviant acts pe

or with the complicity of, state agencies. Although recent events—the
Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the creation of the International Cr
(ICC)—have undoubtedly helped to stimulate interest in this branch of sch
is by no means new. It could, as Ward notes in this issue, claim to be a cent
E. D. Morel's (1904) study of the regime of the Belgian King Leopold II in t
plausible candidate to be its founding text. It is not hard to draw topical p
Morel's study. An imperial regime which claims to be on a mission to imp
values on backward peoples—and, more specifically, Muslims (in the
Congo, the so-called 'Arab slave traders' of central Africa)—itself stan
torture and murder. The ironies of the 'new military humanism' (Chom
not without historical precedent.
Morel never called himself a criminologist and many of the key contrib
study of state crime have come from outside the discipline of crimino
from political science, international relations and anthropology. Wheth
criminologists or not, a good deal of the literature fits one side or other o
(2001) dichotomy between 'criminologies of the other' and 'criminologi
The 'others' are the non-Western, non-democratic states (not least, of cour
Hussein's Iraq), whose appalling tallies of mass murder Rummell (199
have meticulously documented. 'Rogue states', 'failed states' and 'warlo
boundaries between state crime and more conventional gangsterism
1991; Mueller 2004). If 'they' are the gangsters, then 'we' can presen
police. By contrast, 'criminologies of the self present state crime as a natu
of the economic, military and geopolitical rationalities of advanced cap
The North American criminological literature devoted explicidy to sta
state-corporate and state-organized crime) is predominandy in this vein (e
1989; Barak 1991; Ross 2000; Friedrichs 2003: 116-151).
We hope this collection demonstrates the unhelpful nature of this
Stigmatizing developing countries and their officials as 'deviant' is not alw
constructive way to promote human rights, as Andrew Jefferson shows in
Nigeria. Developing or middle-income countries often—literally or me
import the tools and the techniques of torture and killing from wealt
sometimes, as Kieran McEvoy and Ruth Jamieson show, import the victim
to developing countries is increasingly contingent on conformity with West
strategies (Federation of American Scientists Fund 2002), encouraging s
rights abuses in both the developed and developing world. Jude M
Sharon Pickering show how the 'financial war on terror' exacerbates this p

* Penny Green, School of Law, University of Westminster; p.j.green@westminster.ac.uk. Tony Ward, Departm
sity of Hull; a.ward@hull.ac.uk.

431

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 GREEN AND WARD

This collection also illustrates the close parallels between state crim
developed and developing world. As Green demonstrates, corruption, c
links between state elites and criminal networks are almost identical
Turkey, despite their different levels of economic and political deve
approach applied to the United States by Kramer and Michalowski in t
developed by their colleagues elsewhere (Kramer 1992; Kauzlarich and
Matthews and Kauzlarich 2000), can equally be applied to Honduras or N
and Ward 2004: Chapter 3).
Another area of growing interest within criminology is the possibility o
victims of state crime. The final three papers in the volume explore the is
public inquiries, international criminal justice and truth and reconcili
sions. Scraton and Rolston discuss the shortcomings of public inquiries by
into other state officials. The limitations of international criminal justice
same critical attention as its domestic counterparts. The ICC faces obvious
not least the linkage of US aid to immunity from prosecution (Global
2004) and the US refusal to accept its jurisdiction. Roche extends the
retributive and restorative justice to the ICC, arguing that truth commiss
forms of reconciliation, provided they meet certain standards of justice, w
preferable to international prosecutions. But truth commissions also have
as Stanley argues: most notably, their inability to recognize and challenge
ized patterns of inequality.
Criminology has also been guilty of a failure to recognize state crime
the contribution of state agencies to the world's homicide rates and the sc
economic crimes, the space devoted to state crime in the literature of
remains pitifully small. The teaching of a growing number of courses on s
well as the increasing body of scholarly work on the subject, indicate that c
are beginning—but only beginning—to remedy this omission.

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432

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 INTRODUCTION

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433

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