state crime case study examples

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Category: state crime

Examples of state crimes 2020-2023.

Three examples of state crimes since 2020 include Russia targeting civilians during the Ukraine invasion, China’s genocide against the Uyghur’s and the Taliban’s denial of women’s rights.

This post provides several examples of Contemporary State Crimes and links to sources of information students can use to explore State Crimes further.

Before reading this post, you might like to read these two posts:

• What is State Crime ?
• Sociological Perspectives on State Crime

Studying State Crime is an explicit requirement for students studying A-level Sociology, as part of the compulsory Crime and Deviance Module .

Below I have highlighted five countries who are responsible for some of the worst state crimes in recent years….

I’ve tried to select examples of mainly developed countries committing state crimes, to demonstrate that it’s not all impoverished, war torn countries or ‘rogue states’ who are state-criminal actors.

It is, however, important to realise that I have been selective (so there is some selection bias here and these examples will lack representativeness) but I think it has to be this way to make this topic manageable. I have included links below where you can search for further examples of State Crimes.

NB – this post is a work in progress!

Countries Committing State Crimes in 2020-2023

Three prominent examples of governments committing crimes against humanity since 2020 include:

• Russia – the invasion of Ukraine
• China – the cultural genocide against the Uyghers.
• The Taliban’s increasing oppression of women.

Russia’s Crimes Against Humanity

Historically, there’s only one real contender for the the worst state criminal in all of all of human history – the USA.

The International Criminal Court is currently investigating Russia for potential crimes against humanity committed during its invasion of Ukraine . Russia is under investigation for the following crimes:

• deliberate targeting of civilian areas and the systematic mass killing civilians.
• Torture and rape of civilians in Ukraine and Ukrainian prisoners held in Russian territory.
• Forced deportation of over two million Ukrainian adults and children to Russia since the start of the invasion.

China’s Genocide Against the Uyghurs

The Human Right’s Watch Report 2021 report summarises a nearly 10 year history of human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese State. The Uyghurs live in Xinjiang province in the far North East of China, a relatively remote and underdeveloped region of China.

In 2014 the Chinese government commenced a “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism” in the Xinjiang region has since involved pressuring Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims to abandon Islam and their culture.

Two examples of Chinese state crimes include:

• Since 2014 over one million ethnic minorities have been forcibly detained and subject to ‘re-education’ sometimes involved torture.
• The populations of the region are also subject to mass surveillance and there are reports of women having been forcibly sterilised.

These actions by the Chinese state are possibly characterised as a cultural genocide and are ongoing today.

The Chinese State has a history of violating human rights. For example the crushing of Hong Kong’s freedoms, ongoing repression in Tibet and Inner Mongolia, and the crackdown on independent voices throughout the country more generally.

The Taliban in Afghanistan

According to Human Rights Watch since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan they have:

• forced women to wear headscalves in public
• Banned girls from secondary education
• Banned women from working and public office.
• Imposed mass censorchip on the media, undermining freedom of speach
• Murdered or disappeared numerous political opponents.

The United States and Israel as State Criminals

Despite the United States outing Russia as a perpetrator of State Crime in Ukraine, according to Noam Chomsky, the United States, along with Israel, are the two worst terrorist organisations/ rogue states of modern times, even if in the last couple of years their crimes against humanity may have been out of the spotlight!

The Crimes of the United States of America

Below is a useful summary video which takes a trip through some of the War Crimes committed by the United States of America since the end of World War Two.

The State of Israel

Israel has been committing crimes against Palestinians in the occupied territories for several decades now – there are presently almost 7 million Palestinian victims of Israeli apartheid policies which forbids Palestinians from having equal access to regions across Israel. This 2021 report from Human Rights watch explores this. A more accessible report might be this one from Amnesty international .

Some of the crimes the state of Israel commits against Palestinian civilians include:

• Unlawful killing
• Prevention of freedom of movement
• Forced displacement
• Discrimination

Syria and Turkey

War Crimes are still being committed by Syria and Turkey in Syria – including the arbitrary killing of civilians, forced detention, which can lead to the death penalty, looting of property and displacement of peoples – there are now 6 million refugees from the region.

Interestingly the report also labels neighbouring countries as committing crimes by blocking access to these refugees!

War Crimes in War Torn Countries (Special Note)

NB – you will find plenty of examples of many state crimes in war torn countries such as Yemen for example, but it seemed a little bit too easy to focus on those, I’m trying to be critical here!

Three organisations which monitor state crimes:

• Amnesty International has a useful hub page here which will allow you to explore contemporary case studies of States involved in various crimes – such as disappearances, political violence, torture and states denying citizens freedom of expression.
• Human Rights Watch – monitors all sorts of State crimes – they cover some of the same ground as Amnesty but also focus more extensively on issues such as women’s’ rights, and reproductive rights and lots more. Their reports page is well worth a browse!
• Transparency International – monitors global political corruption – they’ve developed an index based on surveys which asks people questions such as ‘have you paid a bribe to access a public service in the last year’ – they rank countries according to how corrupt they are and do research into corruption in several countries. You can access the latest world corruption report here .
• You might also be interested in this rare academic source – The State Crime Journal .

Sources and Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance module.

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The Deportation of Chevon Brown – A Breach of Human Rights?

It can be difficult to find easy to understand examples of the state breaching individual human rights, but the recent deportation of Chevon Brown might just be one such example.

This case study from February 2020 is relevant to the ‘state crime and human right’s topic within the A-level sociology Crime and Deviance module .

In February 2020 Chevon Brown was deported to Jamaica from the United Kingdom.

He had just been released from Prison having served 8 months of a 14 month sentence for danagerous driving and driving with no insurance.

He was 21 when he decided to take his car for a spin, despite being a learner driver with no insurance, and when he saw police, he says he panicked, and sped up, which led to a 5 minutes high speed chase, and he puts his actions down to stupidity, and he’s paid the ultimate price.

Britain has the right to deport foreign citizens who have been sentenced to 12 months or more in prison, under the UK Borders Act, which came into force in 2007, unless doing so would infringe their human rights, by sending them back to a country where their life would be at threat, for example.

Chevon was 14 when he moved to Britain with his father on a Jamaican Passport. Despite having ‘indefinite leave to remain’ in the UK, he is still technically a Jamaican national, and so the UK had the right to deport him. The problem is, he no longer has any friends or family in Jaimaica, and his father is remaining in the UK, with his other children.

Since returning to Jamaica, Chevon says he doesn’t feel safe. “I am nervous walking down the street,” he says. “Anything could happen – every day people die here.”

According to UN data, Jamaica had a murder rate of 47 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2016. In the UK, the rate was 1 per 100,000.

Chevon was deported along with 40 other criminals, many of whom had committed more serious offenses, such as murder, and he says the Jamaican media as labelled them all with the same brush, so it is difficult for him to make friends or find a job.

“I’m labelled a murderer, a drug trafficker and a rapist” Chevon Brown was deported from the UK to Jamaica last year, alongside other convicted criminals, after serving time in prison for dangerous driving He says his life has become a “complete mess” https://t.co/H8VdYbdbF5 pic.twitter.com/dK0WKs4amY — Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) February 12, 2020

Sources – The BBC News May 2020.

Sociological Questions to consider about this case study

• Is deportation for ‘dangerous driving’ an appropriate punishment?
• Given his lack of friends and family in Jamaica, the alleged discrimination he’s facing (due to negative media labeling) and his increased chance of being murdered, did the UK government breach his human rights by deporting him?
• Is this deportation an example of institutional racism?
• Do you think the original decision to imprison him for 14 months was fair, or just another example of institutional racism?

By contrast you might want to consider this in relation to the case of Anne Sacoolas , the American Diplomat’s Wife who actually killed a British Teenager by driving on the wrong side of the road, fled back to America and is now being protected by the US Government, rather than being deported back to the UK to stand trial.

China’s Persecution of the Uighurs – A Horrible Example of a State Crime

The Chinese government is currently engaged in an ongoing act of cultural genocide against the Uighur Muslims, a minority population within North Western China.

As part of this cultural genocide, 15000 mosques have already been bulldozed and thousands of Uighur Muslims have been rounded up and forced into ‘re-education’ camps (which the Chinese government calls ‘job training’ centers.

In these camps they are forced to renounce their faith and their traditions, and to speak Mandarin Chinese.

The Chinese state has used surveillance technology including facial recognition, mandatory fingerprinting, Iris scans, and routine checks on phones, combined with AI based predictive software to flag up suspects who ‘refuse alcohol’ or who ‘discuss the Koran’.

The camps were constructed following a series of terror attacks in the region, leaked government documents have President Xi dictating his officials to show ‘no mercy’ in the battled against extremists, and that anyone ‘infected’ by extremism requires a painful ‘interventionary treatment’ where their ‘erroneous thinking’ can be eradicated.

Relevance of this to A-level sociology

Firstly, it’s a horrific example of a contemporary state crime – this is a flagrant abuse of the human rights (as ‘protected’ by the United Nations) by the Chinese State.

Secondly, it’s a good example of both the power of the Nation State (China) to abuse people, and the powerlessness other Nation States to do anything about it – pretty much every country on Earth is ignoring this, including Muslim majority countries.

Thirdly, it’s an interesting (and again horrific) example of how surveillance can be used to control people.

Source: The Week, 30 September 2019.

Find out More

This Al Jazeera news article is a useful starting point.

Britain’s recent involvement in torture – a good example of a ‘state crime’

Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee It’s been 15 years since allegations first emerged of Britain’s involvement in the torture of those suspected of the 9/11 terror attacks, and earlier this month (July 2018) an official report has finally been released which reveals the ‘true’ extent of Britain’s compliance with the USA’s programme of torture.

According to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), Britain’s involvement amounted to at least 13 occasions of British agents witnessing suspects being mistreated and having been informed (but done nothing about) of mistreatment by their foreign counterparts or detainees more than 150 times.

The report found that British agents weren’t directly involved in torture themselves, but the strategy of British intelligence was to ‘outsource’ the interrogation process to those who they knew used ‘enhanced techniques such as stress positions, sleep deprivation and beatings.

The British effectively turned a blind eye to the fact that the USA was in breach of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights. They were so ‘blind’ in fact that they ignored the fact that at one detention centre detainees were kept in containers so small that they could neither stand or lie down, getting around this particular breach of human rights by simply building interrogation portacabins which were large enough to comfortably accommodate the prisoners.

So why did this happen?

Following 9/11 the security and intelligent services were under intense pressure to find and prosecute those responsible, but also to find information which might prevent future terrorist attacks. The problem with using such techniques, however, is that they might well just serve to increase recruitment to the same terrorist networks the authorities are trying to quash.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This seems to be a good example of Britain being involved in a ‘state crime’ , also a good example of the extent of barriers to researching powerful actors: it’s taken 15 years for this official report to be conducted, and even this doesn’t tell us the whole story: Theresa May refused permission for four key officers to give evidence on national security grounds, so the true extent of Britain’s complicity in state crime may not surface for many years to come!

• The Week, 7 July 2018
• Independent Article

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State Crimes

While crime is committed by individuals and groups of people, nation states also engage in criminal activity. Clearly a nation as an entity cannot commit a crime but a government within that nation can, frequently without the knowledge and support of the people of that nation. While such governments are in power and engaging in criminal offences, there are only two ways to remove them and bring them to justice. The first would be an uprising by the people within that nation and the other would be action by international forces frequently via the United Nations – to give such action legality. International pressure usually starts with a diplomatic warning to stop what you are doing. If this fails the next stage up would be an embargo of trade etc. with the offending nation. If this fails, then the UN does have recourse to military action. When the UN is not involved, organisations such as NATO might take the decision to engage in military action.

A classic case would be Libya in 2011. It is now clear that the Gaddafi regime was engaged in criminal activities against the people of Libya for decades. The recently discovered mass grave (September 2011) of about 1500 men by a former prison used by the Gaddafi regime is one example of how opponents of the regime were dealt with. Over the decades Gaddafi was in power, thousands of deemed opponents disappeared and no one can account for their whereabouts. This may be resolved once DNA testing has been done on the numerous graves that have been found and the records of the secret state police have been trawled through. Rebellion against the regime started in Benghazi and quickly spread to such an extent that the government was forced out of Tripoli and a National Transitional Council (NTC) established. The then rebels were supported both politically and militarily by external agencies. The UN recognised the NTC as the legitimate government of Libya while navies and various air forces bombed selected strategic targets of the regime in support of the rebels but crucially with international support to give what they were doing legitimacy.

In recent years there have been high profile trials against men deemed to have committed crimes against their people and who, once their government has fallen, have been arrested and tried at the international court based in The Hague. One such man was Slobodan Milosevic. He went from being the most powerful man in the former Yugoslavia with all the trappings that went with that to being put on trial for crimes against the Muslim community in that region. While few doubted his guilt, there was a huge desire to see him go through a legal process that Milosevic denied to thousands of others. He died during his trial.

Others deemed to have offended their own people have been overthrown using international force but have been tried by their own people. The most recent high profile case was Sudden Hussein. After his downfall and subsequent arrest, he was tried by an Iraqi court, sentenced to death and hanged – a punishment not meted out by the International Court at The Hague.

Over the years former high profile government ministers in Rwanda had been tried and imprisoned for their part in the genocide that took place there.

While it is easy to point the finger of blame at certain nations – usually classed as second world or third world nations – nations deemed to be ‘first world’ nations are not so keen to be labelled as ones that commit state crimes. They are usually the ones to give military support to a nation in turmoil and thus come out as the ‘good guys’ after a regime is toppled. France and the UK were the primary providers of air support for the Libyan rebels in 2011 and are credited with doing extreme damage to the war machine of Gaddafi effectively crippling it and making the task of the rebels easier. Many suspect and believe that the rebels – frequently portrayed by the media as being highly enthusiastic for their cause but chaotically organised – were given support at ground level by Special Forces operatives. Few have mourned the defeat of the Gaddafi regime and the joy of the people of Libya at the start of a new era is obvious to all. When the UK’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the French President, Nicolas Sakozy, visited Libya in September 2011 they were enthusiastically greeted by the Libyans who saw them as being the main helpers in their liberation.

The use of torture to gain information is internationally banned by the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The convention also explicitly forbids the use of such ‘evidence’ in legal proceedings. In December 2005, in a case Liberty intervened in, the House of Lords confirmed that the use of evidence derived from torture was unlawful, regardless of who carried out the torture. It held that the ban on torture and other forms of ill-treatment is absolute and cannot be opted out of. The use of ‘evidence’ that might have been obtained in violation of that ban is therefore unlawful.

The defeat of the Gaddafi regime also exposed a dark secret that certain agencies within the UK would have liked to have remained secret. Torture of arrested suspects within the UK is illegal. But documents retrieved from the headquarters of the ransacked Libyan state security police clearly show that very recently suspected terrorists arrested by UK forces in Afghanistan, for example, were sent by British agencies to Libya to be questioned about their activities. Many believe that these suspects were tortured to gain information and that this information was passed onto British security agencies. The process is known as extraordinary rendition and has been outlawed by the UK government. The former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who held the position at the time this was apparently happening has told The House of Commons in a very public statement that he had no knowledge that this was going on. Effectively, Straw said that it was going on behind his back. There are two issues here. Do we need information to guard us against possible terrorist attacks? The answer is clearly ‘yes’. Is it acceptable to use any means possible to get such information that could protect many innocent people? This is the more difficult of the two questions. If someone believes that the answer is also ‘yes’ then that is an admission by that person that in this case torture – outlawed in the UK – is an acceptable way to gain said information. The UK was found guilty of using torture against IRA suspects in Northern Ireland during the troubles when ‘white light’ was used.

France – also celebrated in Libya as a nation that supported the rebels – was also complicit when a Greenpeace boat – the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ – was sunk by French agents from their foreign intelligence services (the DGSE) in New Zealand killing one of the men on board, a photographer called Fernando Pereira. Again, the French government denied all knowledge that anything like this was planned but the episode did lead the resignation of the French Defence Minister Charles Hernu. This led to the next question – what else do these agencies of the government do without the knowledge of their governments? Which countries have such secret agencies that operate in such a cavalier manner outside of government control?

Is a nation that commits crimes against its people but is outside of the ‘first nation club’ more culpable that a nation in the ‘first nation club’ that also commits crimes? Is it simply a case of numbers? One dead crew member on the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ compared to nearly 1 million dead in the Rwanda genocide? Is upholding the law more important than acquiring information that could save many lives?

Courtesy of Lee Bryant, Director of Sixth Form, Anglo-European School, Ingatestone, Essex

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State crimes and state harms: a tale of two definitional frameworks

• Published: 25 October 2007
• Volume 48 , pages 43–55, ( 2007 )

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• Rick A. Matthews 1 &
• David Kauzlarich 2  

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Criminologists have long debated the issue of how to define crime, and hence, the scope of criminological inquiry. For years, some critical criminologists have argued for expanded definitions of crime that include harmful behaviors of the state that may not be officially defined as criminal. Other critical criminologists have argued that existing legal frameworks may be used to study varieties of state crime, and that defining the harmful actions of the state as criminal is important to help mobilize public support for their control. In this paper, we first trace the historical development of these two perspectives, and then offer a tentative solution to the seeming tension between these two perspectives.

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Matthews, R.A., Kauzlarich, D. State crimes and state harms: a tale of two definitional frameworks. Crime Law Soc Change 48 , 43–55 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-007-9081-5

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Published : 25 October 2007

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-007-9081-5

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State Crime by Christopher Mullins LAST REVIEWED: 24 June 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 24 June 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396607-0014

The focused academic study of crimes committed by nation-states is now more than two decades old, spanning several generations of scholars and increasingly drawing on multiple theoretical positions. At its root is the attempt to push the boundaries of both academic and political discourses to provide a recognition of the most harmful actions as states as criminal in nature and to bring social scientific theories of crime and criminality to bear in the identification, analysis, and control of these events. The subfield developed out of white-collar crime studies, as a group of mainly critical scholars applied and revised conceptual and theoretical materials developed in the study of crimes of corporations (and their actors) to the behavior (and agents) of nation-states. Of course, not all scholars who approach the study of crimes committed by nation-states are tied to critical criminology. Some work has been published that looks at law violation by states criminologically from mainstream theoretical perspectives. As this article is situated in the discipline of criminology, there are some threads of research that it does not index. Criminologists are not the only scholars to research crimes committed by nation-states. Even though the field is highly interdisciplinary, areas of overlap with history, political science, and legal studies exist. While these bodies of work are beneficial and illuminating, this bibliography limits itself to work that has an explicit or implicit criminological foundation. While a section is included here on genocides and other mass atrocities, sources included are limited to those that somehow work within criminological theories or approaches. Thus, the massive literature on the Holocaust is excluded (save for the few criminological explorations), as is political science–based work on state violence and repression (i.e., the work of Gurr or Rummel).

Since the late 20th century, a number of books have been published that provide a conceptual and empirical overview of the field. Some have taken the form of anthologized collections; others are monographs. All represent an attempt to define and overview the breadth and depth of the field. Most anthologies represent multiple positions on Definitions and Conceptualizations . Barak 1991 represents the earliest statement of the field and its concerns, while Friedrichs 1998 , a two-volume work, is the most extensive. Green and Ward 2004 and Rothe 2009 are both excellent overviews. Two recent anthologies are both strong contributions, with Chambliss, et al. 2010 focusing more on issues of neo-empire and state crime and Rothe and Mullins 2011 providing a broader presentation of the field as a whole.

Barak, Gregg. 1991. Crimes by the capitalist state: An introduction to state criminality . Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.

This early anthology pulls together a number of disparate views and conceptual frameworks. The uniting factors are the attempts to define state crime and to apply basic conceptual and theoretical positions from criminology (especially critical criminology) to specific cases of state crime.

Chambliss, William J., Raymond Michalowski, and Ronald C. Kramer, eds. 2010. State crime in the global age . Collumpton, UK: Willan.

Anthology of essays examining many current expressions of state crime. Integrates issues on globalism and internationalisms throughout. Strongly focused on issues of empire and state imperialism. An excellent presentation of this vein of state crime thinking and scholarship.

Friedrichs, David O., ed. 1998. State crime . 2 vols. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.

Anthology of state crime and legal studies pieces that attempt to identify and understand violations of law by nation-states. An invaluable resource for the serious scholar of the field. Includes numerous pieces from law, political science, and other disciplines not typically read by criminologists.

Green, Penny, and Tony Ward. 2004. State crime: Governments, violence and corruption . London: Pluto.

Provides an overview of the nature and types of state crime. Becker-influenced audience-based definition is central. Suggests that state acts are criminal when social audiences define them as such. Involves actions typically defined as criminal, but also governmental responses to natural disasters, maintaining services, and similar realms of state responsibility.

Rothe, Dawn L. 2009. State criminality: The crime of all crimes . Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Subfield overview suitable for students and scholars. Covers and classifies numerous cases of crimes and controls. Expands the boundaries of state crime to include violations of international law. Stands as the best assimilation and presentation of work in the field to date.

Rothe, Dawn L., and Christopher W. Mullins, eds. 2011. State crime: Current perspectives . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.

Presents updated versions of several classic essays in the field, as well a few new works. It covers the more traditional orientations of state crime as well as the two new threads of crimes of empire and the push into supranational criminology. Valuable as an introduction or for experienced scholars.

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