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Criminology of state crimes from the perspective of opportunity theory

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences ,Allameh Tabataba”i University, Tehran, Iran

2 University of Isfahan, Department of Law, Faculty of Administrative Sciences and Economics

3 Department of Law, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran

Abstract

State crimes are committed by the state against human rights. Although this kind of crime has a long history,the etiology of these crimes still lacks explanatory theories. State crimes One of the white-collar crimes that is the violation of fundamental human rights by the governmental organization. The characteristics of these crimes, such as being organizational, complex, and related to the power structure, are such that they cannot be explained in just one dimension. Thus, there is no choice but to use different theories to explain the state crimes. To achieve this goal, we can use some mainstream criminology theories, such as opportunity.The opportunity theory is a commonly-used approach that is employed to analyze etiology of state crimes. Using the abovementioned theory, the present research aimed to describe the quality of committing state crimes in terms of such elements as incentives,objectives,impedimenta as well as limitations. Research findings suggest that states would commit state crimes in order to preserve and maintain their political power, achieve ideological purposes, access to economical advantages as well as governing people. Holding power, lack of supervision and liability, obscurity, lack of responsibility, public trust, lack of laws supporting citizens’ rights, disinclination of citizens for participation in public affairs and so forth are taken into account as backgrounds which strongly assist the government to achieve its objectives. However, the aforementioned backgrounds accompanied with such elements as illiteracy, civil indifference, fear of the government, as well as presence of such limitations as existing a potent civil society, non-state organizations for defending civil rights, liberal media, and international mechanisms will lead to committing state crimes. The opportunity theory through the use of above-mentioned etiology suggests that improving structures which give the government incentive, increasing  interior and exterior controls which minimize state’s chances to commit crimes as well as strengthening either domestic or international limitations would help to prevent governments from committing state crimes. The proposed theory focuses primarily on structural factors affecting the state crime. These factors include the political structure (with totalitarian and authoritarian rule), the ideology of the ruling class (supremacy arising from nationality, religion, class) and the economic structure (command or Free Market Economy) that provide the basis for state crimes by creating the necessary incentives to commit them, such as community control, ideological control, economic interests and control. In the next stage, in the absence of barriers and control, the government will be in an Institutional anomie and will not refrain from taking any action to achieve its goals. If there are control mechanisms, the government uses neutralization and labeling techniques to overcome them. Ultimately, conditions such as ignorance, civic indifference, non-participation, fear of government, and obedience will contribute to the state crimes. When the government achieves its goals by committing state crimes, and there is no reaction against it, it will commit these crimes again through behavioral reinforcement. Repeating state crimes over and over again means that the government has learned to commit crimes against citizens and has made it as a behavioral trait for itself.
Although the opportunity theory can explain the occurrence of state crimes to some extent, but due to its shortcomings, it is unable to explain the various aspects of these crimes, so we need unified theories. So In the late 1960s, criminology became so entrenched in extreme truth-seeking, theoretical crisis, and the endless competition of theories that it required a dramatic transformation to survive. To solve this problem, criminologists, distancing themselves from modern paradigms, have opened their arms to perspectives that seek the future of criminology in the reconciliation of theories without theoretical competition and extreme simplification. Thus, integrative criminology was born. One of the strategies through which integrative criminology seeks to make criminological theories more profitable is the combination of criminological theories, which is referred to as an integrated theory approach. Despite some criticism, this approach was gradually adopted, and integrated theories were born one after another. However, like other criminological theories, most of the integrated theories in the field of street crime were made, and the integrated analysis of different types of white-collar crimes was ignored. One of the white-collar crimes that suffers from the lack of integrated theory is the violation of fundamental human rights by the governmental organization, which is called state crimes. The characteristics of these crimes, such as being organizational, complex, and related to the power structure, are such that they cannot be explained in just one dimension. Thus, there is no choice but to integrate different theories to explain the state crimes. To achieve this goal, we can use some mainstream criminology theories, such as opportunity, labeling, control theories, neutralization and anomie techniques, as well as critical theories, like Marxist and Structural criminology.

Keywords

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Journal of Criminal Law Research
Volume 12, Issue 44
April 2023
Pages 9-52
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