Global Crime

I'm Tania Wyatt, professor of criminology at Northumbria University,

And the lecture today is transnational environmental crime.

In this first section,

I'm going to talk about global crime in particular and to understand global crime.

First,

we need to understand what globalisation is and why

it's important and how that then links into crime.

So what is globalisation

held talked about in 2000 that this is the interconnectedness of the world.

It's this enmesh mint of human societies where the local

is linked to the much bigger picture around the world.

Giddens has also talked about this in 1990 he defined it

as the intensification of worldwide social

relations which link distinct localities.

Uh, so we have shared events around the world,

so things happening on the other side of the

planet actually shape events in your local area.

We see this in a number of ways.

There is what's called the time and space compression, so

whereas decades ago it would have taken me a day to get to Australia.

Today I can be on a plane and to Australia within just a single day.

So this space has has been compressed

the interconnectedness of long distance events that I just mentioned.

And the coronavirus outbreak that's currently going

on is a clear indication of this.

Something that's happened thousands of miles away is

impacting on local areas all over the world.

We also see evidence of globalisation

in our economic interdependency that financial

markets in different countries impact on other countries all around the world.

Again,

we also see what gets called cultural homogeneity, or hybridisation,

which really just means a sameness,

that the culture around the world is all becoming one.

And we can see this that there's a McDonald's.

In most countries, there's a Starbucks. In most countries, high streets in the U.

K look very similar.

So we see this cultural sameness around different parts of the world.

We also have speed of communications.

So whereas before we would have written post,

this is evolved to become the telephone and then email,

and now we have WhatsApp and Twitter so instant communication,

and this is directly connected to the innovations in

technology which are also a big part of globalisation.

What we also see in terms of globalisation, it gets a lot of conversation globally,

is about free markets and that global finance and

capital and institutions are acting on global levels.

So we have transnational interactions,

companies acting in dozens of countries rather than just within a single nation.

And part of this is the spread of the neo liberal ideology.

This idea that the free market can solve lots of problems

and that everyone can benefit when the market is free,

that we can all profit from having a market with very little regulation.

At the same time we've seen then the decline of social democracies.

So welfare states where you have very

prominent health care systems are free education.

Those have really declined in the last years.

At the same time, we see this idea of the free market rising,

and part of that we see global movement of commodities so

you can order something from anywhere in the world now,

Uh, but also most people,

not everyone but a lot of people also have freedom of movement.

So with the UK passport,

there's probably nowhere in the world that we're not allowed to go to.

Uh, we may need a visa, but most countries, if not all countries,

are actually open to us.

So we see linked to that this openness of borders, where people are moving,

products are moving and this freedom of the markets that

you can buy almost anything from anywhere in the world

again, there is the ease of migration again is a British citizen.

It's easy to migrate to other places.

And again, that's not true for every nationality,

but for European ones in particular.

Uh, there is this ease.

We see a deindustrialisation in the West,

so the shift from manufacturing say shipbuilding or coal

mining into more service sector kinds of things.

And this is part of that free market of

offering digital services rather than actually creating products.

And while all this is going on, we also see the increase,

the growth of criminal markets.

And part of that has to do with

marginalisation of people that we see during globalisation,

being recruited into actually participating in in this criminality

and a big part of the globalisation.

And I imagine that you have heard about this this tension

that globalisation is created between the north and the South,

or as it gets called the so called developed and developing.

So countries that are more advanced technologically

and in all of these areas of globalisation

rather than those that are still actually transitioning

and having growth at the same time.

Why is all of this important?

So it's important because globalisation is really linked to a lot of inequality.

And what are the consequences of that inequality?

We see a huge amount of skewing of, of profits.

Who is benefiting from all of this free market globalisation,

and a lot of it of that profit is going

to the transnational corporations and the so called powerful.

You hear conversations about the 1%.

They are the ones that are benefiting from this kind of system,

and others are actually being squeezed out and suffering from this inequality.

What that means is some people turn to crime as an answer to the inequality.

But it also means that the shared insecurities of having people that

are suffering to make ends meet uh is on a global scale.

And we see that in various different parts of the world.

We also see that national borders have

very little protective capacity for these risks.

Again, I mentioned the coronavirus,

and this is an example of that being in one

country isn't going to protect from from some sort of risk

and catch a Franco as a scholar at the University of

Oslo really talks about criminology is very well placed to actually

research this interconnectedness and this vulnerability that we share as a globe.

I want to talk now a bit more about

what gets called the criminal genic effects of globalisation.

So why is globalisation actually linked to crime?

And it's partly to do with all of these different aspects.

I talked about globalisation, so better communication, quicker travel.

All of this actually enables better opportunities to commit crime. So there is a

an ease to communicate with other criminals, to arrange for criminal activity,

to work in and facilitate illicit kind of markets.

There's also the open borders, so commodities move much more easily.

People move much more easily, so crime is a side effect of that

inequality,

insecurity marginalisation that comes with globalisation also

can push people actually into committing crime,

whereas in other contexts they might not have.

We also see widespread corruption levels playing a role.

So countries, uh,

that have corrupt governments may be playing

a much bigger part in global criminality,

and then also we see what has been termed

friendly relations between criminal organisations With open borders,

easy communication,

criminal organisations can actually collaborate much more easily than

they may have been able to in the past.

What does that mean for the global crime picture?

Then we have lots of different Eliphas lit markets drug trafficking,

obviously one that we've known about for decades.

But we also see trafficking and weapons trafficking in human beings,

trafficking in wildlife and timber.

We also see financial crimes on a global level money laundering, uh,

cybercrime and all of its various kinds of forms.

I mentioned corruption being much more global.

There's also, though, the elements about violence in the world,

so violence particularly related to terrorism.

So september 11th, 2001 in the U. S. You have these

violent acts happening on a global scale rather

than just confined within a nation state,

and we also see war crimes and they may not be more prevalent.

But we do know that they are certainly more known about so

we can see what's happening in Syria with the Assad regime,

for instance,

actually committing human rights violations upon the people of his own country.

The effects of this kind of global crime and particularly around illicit markets,

is really striking.

So Castells actually suggests that illicit markets

are worth £1 trillion every single year.

Now this rivals many countries' gross

domestic product gross domestic products rather.

But it's also a genuine rival to global corporations.

It's a tremendous amount of money and with money comes power.

So we have the corruption of business, politics, the police,

all trying to get a piece of this criminal kind of profit,

which has been argued to really shift cultural

values in terms of people taking the opportunity to

engage in crime because it is so profitable and also just a bit of of of nihilism.

So people feeling very hopeless and actually trying

to combat such an immense kind of problem

we also see in some parts of the world, anyway,

rises in levels of violence related to illicit markets,

and Mexico is a really striking example of

that where you have thousands of murders every

year really connected almost directly to the drug

cartels and their power struggle within that country.

It actually gets estimated that the gross criminal

product could rival some gross domestic product,

so 5% of the global economy actually might be attributed to criminal profits.

And some scholars have actually even said in Pakistan in particular,

their gross criminal product is three times as much as the gross domestic product.

So you can imagine that global crime really has an impact on

sovereignty and the rule of law in some parts of the world,

and we see that that money actually gets integrated into the global economy.

So much money laundering just doesn't stay within one country.

It actually travels in the whole global supply chain.

And we saw this in particular after the fall of the Soviet Union,

where all of the money coming out of of what

is now Russia was laundered into the legal supply chains.

And part of that is linked to no taxation safe zones, uh,

areas of the world that actually are

trying to get more income by attracting these

kinds of organisations that could be transnational corporations.

But it could also be criminal organisations