Globalization has led to increased interconnectedness between societies and opportunities for transnational crime. It has created a large global criminal economy worth over $1 trillion annually, which includes activities like arms trafficking, smuggling of people, drugs and other illegal goods, cybercrime, money laundering, and sex tourism that connect various countries. Globalization has also changed how crime is organized, with looser networks operating across borders yet still rooted locally. Some sociologists argue that globalization's spread of neoliberal capitalism and deregulation has exacerbated inequality and insecurity, fueling demand for illicit goods and new opportunities for large-scale criminal activities.

1. Globalisation, Green Crime,
Human Rights and State Crimes

2. Lesson Objectives
• To understand the ways in which globalisation
and crime are related.
• To investigate what Sociologists can tell us
about green crime
• Look at the relationship between state crimes
and human rights

3. • Globalisation- refers to the increasing
Interconnectedness of societies: what
happens in one locality is shaped by distant
events and vice versa
• Globalisation has many causes including the
spread of new ICT and the influence of the
global mass media, cheap air travel and the
deregulation of financial and other markets

4. Activity
• Using the globalisation and crime starter sheet
link up the type of crime to its definition.

5. The global criminal economy
• Held et al claimed that there had been a
globalisation of crime. The increasing
interconnectedness of crime across national
borders, and the spread of transnational
organised crime.
• Globalisation creates new opportunities for
crime, new means of committing crime and
new offences e.g. Various cyber crimes

6. • Castells (1998) argues there is a global
criminal economy worth over £1 trillion per
annum
• There is both a demand side (West) and a
supply side (Third World Countries)
• The global criminal economy could not
function without a supply side that provides
drugs, sex workers etc
• This takes many forms:

7. Arms and nuclear material trafficking

8. Trafficking and smuggling people

9. Trafficking body parts
An estimated 2,000 organs are taken from criminals in
China.

10. Sex tourism

11. Cyber crime

12. Green Crimes

13. Smuggling of Illegal Goods

14. International Terrorism

15. Trafficking cultural artefacts

16. Trafficking endangered species

17. Drugs trade
Worth an estimated $300-
400 billion annually at
street prices

18. Money Laundering

19. Global Risk Consciousness
• Globalisation creates new insecurities or ‘risk
consciousness’. Risk is 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 about risks of C&D and need to
protect borders
• Along with media creating moral panics- negative coverage
of immigrants- leads to hate crimes
• Leading to intensification of social control at the
national level- UK tightening border controls
• Another result of globalised risk is the increased
attempts at international cooperation & control in
various ‘wars’ on terror, drugs & crime

20. Globalisation, Capitalism and Crime
• From a Marxist perspective, Taylor (1997) argues
that by giving free reign to market forces
globalisation has led to greater inequality and
rising crime
• Transactional corporations (TNCs) can now
switch manufacturing to low wage countries to
gain higher profits, producing job insecurity,
unemployment and poverty
• Deregulation means government have little
control over their own economies (create jobs & raise taxes)
and state spending on welfare has declined

21. • Marketisation has encouraged people to see
themselves as individual consumers, calculating
the personal costs and benefits of each action,
undermining social cohesion
• The increasingly materialistic culture promoted
by the global media portrays success in terms of
a lifestyle of consumption
• These factors create insecurity and widening
inequalities that encourage people to turn to
crime e.g. lucrative drug trade (Deindustrialisation in LA
led to growth of drug gangs)

22. • For the elite globalisation creates large scale
criminal opportunities e.g. Deregulation of
financial markets creates opportunities for
insider trading and tax evasion
• Globalisation also led to new employment
patterns creating new opportunities for crime
e.g. Using subcontracting to recruit ‘flexible’
workers often working illegally or for less than
minimum wage or working in breach of H&S
or labour laws

23. Patterns of Criminal Organisation
• As globalisation creates new criminal
opportunities, it is also giving rise to new
forms of criminal organisation:
1.‘Glocal’ organisation- Hobbs & Dunningham
found that the way crime is organised is linked
to globalisation. It involves individuals with
contacts acting as a ‘hub’ around which a
loose-knit network forms, often linking
legitimate and illegitimate activities.

24. • This is different from rigid hierarchical ‘Mafia’
style criminal organisations of the past
• These new forms of organisation have global
links (e.g. Drug smuggling) but crime is still
rooted in its local context (still need local
contacts and networks to find opportunities
and to sell their drugs).
• Concluding that crime works as a ‘glocal’
system- locally based, but with global connections

25. Organised crime and Globalisation (McMafia)

26. 2. McMafia- refers to the organisations that emerged
in Russia & Eastern Europe following the fall of
communism (which was a major factor in the process
of globalisation).
• The new Russian government deregulated much of
the economy, leading to huge rises in food prices and
rents
• However commodity prices (for oil, gas, metals etc)
were kept at old prices (lower than world market
price). Therefore well connected citizens with access
to large funds could buy these up very cheaply and
sell them on the world market (selling at profit-
creating Russia’s new capitalist class ‘oligarchs’)

27. • To protect themselves from increasing
disorder oligarchs turned to the new ‘mafias’
(ex-state security/secret servicemen from old
communist regimes).
• With their assistance the oligarchs were able
to find protection for their wealth and a
means of moving it out of the country
• These criminal organisations were vital for the
entry of the new Russian capitalist class into
the world economy

28. ACTIVITY
• Summarise Globalisation and Crime in
100 words

29. H/W
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/global_
• Here you will find short articles about different aspects
of global crime.
• As a group, you should each choose one of these to
investigate.
• Make sure you understand the details of your chosen
case and then take it in turns to summarise your case as
a presentation to the group.

30. Essay practice
Item B : In today’s society we learn about crime and deviance largely
from the mass media. Unfortunately, however, the image we are given
is often an inaccurate one. While we might expect fictional portrayals of
crime- in films, on TV, in novels and so on- not be an accurate
representation, many sociologists argue that the image presented via
the news media also distorts the reality of crime.
Sociologists are very interested both in the possible causes of these
misrepresentations and also in the effects that they may have on
deviant behaviour
Using material from Item B and elsewhere, assess sociological
explanations of the media representations of crime and their effects (21
marks)

31. Globalisation Transnational crime Risk consciousness
Definition: The way in Greater communication and Increased terrorism has
which we seem to live in an travel have made the drugs increased our awareness
increasingly ‘shrinking industry extend beyond of the international risks
world’, where societies are national boundaries. Often we face and increased
becoming more involving many countries the security at our national
interconnected and supply comes from south borders, airports, ports
dependant on each other. America (Colombia) and its and train stations.
demand from western
countries. Increased crime
Global crime (1
trillion) Globalisation Ian Taylor (1973) Marxist
argues that globalisation
 Arms trafficking and crime
has allowed capitalism to
 Smuggling immigrants create more crime by
Changing crime
exploiting workers abroad
 Trafficking women and
Hobbs and Dunningham say and creating fraud on a
children larger scale.
crime is now longer local but
 Sex tourism ‘Glocal’ meaning it involves manufacturing products
networks of people across the abroad has led to a lack of
 Cyber-crimes –
globe. Gleeny (2008) argues jobs and opportunities for
identity theft and child even the mafia has gone the working class, which
porn global, it has franchised its leads them to crime.
 Drugs trade businesses to different parts of
the globe – McMafia
 Money laundering