State Crime in the Global Age

William J. Chambliss is Professor of Sociology at The George Washington State University, USA. His main areas of research are criminology and the sociology of law, and has authored or co-authored numerous titles, including: Social Problems, Law and Society (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001); Power, Politics, and Crime (Westview Press, 2001); Sociology, 2nd edition (Longman, 1997).Raymond J. Michalowski is Regents' Professor of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University, USA. His research and teaching fields encompass criminological theory, international human rights, immigration and border policy, social justice, and corporate, envrionmental and political crime.Ronald C. Kramer is Professor of Sociology, and Director of the Criminal Justice Program at Western Michigan University. His research specialties within criminology are corporate and state crime, and crime prevention and control strategies, and he is the co-author of Crimes of the American Nuclear State: At Home and Abroad (Northeastern University Press, 1998), and co-editor of State-Corporate Crime: Wrongdoing at the Intersection of Business and Government (Rutgers University Press, 2006).

• 1. Introduction  2. In Search of the State and Crime in State Crime Studies  3. Toward a Criminology of Empire: Centrality of the Empire Concept in the Study of State Violence  4. Obligatory Sacrifice and Imperial Projects  5. Towards a Prospective Criminology of State Crime  6. Modern Institutionalized Torture  7. Privatizing International Conflict: War as Corporate Crime  8. From Guernica to Hiroshima to Baghdad: the Normalization of the State Crime of Terror Bombing Civilians  9. A Fake Law: the 'State of Exception' and Lex Mercatoria in Occupied Iraq  10. Dragon Rising: China's Foreign Aid Policy as a Counter Force Against the Criminogenic Conditions of International Finance Institution Policies?  11. Framing Innocents: the Wrongly Convicted as Victims of State Harm  12. Prosecutorial Misconduct as State Organized Crime?13. Harm Reduction Drug Programs and State Crime  14. Transitional Justice as Global Industry by Elizabeth Stanley  15. The Reason of State: Theoretical Inquiries and Consequences for the Criminology of State Crime  16. Epilogue: for a Public Criminology of State Crime

'Stemming from a 2008 workshop on state crime in the global age held by the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Spain, this collection of essays addresses the neglected area of state crime, the most destructive of all crimes. While attention to white-collar crime has steadily increased, the study of state crime has languished, limiting itself to the narrow confines of high profile crimes. These essays direct attention to a plethora of crimes of political power, including war, terror bombing of civilians, torture, imperial domination, harmful drug prohibition laws, international financial policy, wrongful convictions, and judicial errors. In addition, other chapters examine the futile attempts by offending governments, international legal bodies, and bystander states to exercise meaningful social control. Three sections frame and theorize state crimes, explore their international and domestic varieties, and address strategies for confronting them, including a very persuasive plea for a public criminology of state crime. The introductory and concluding chapters provide a useful contextual overview and synthesis of the essays. An impressive contribution to the literature on crimes of the powerful. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' – G. B. Osborne, University of Alberta in Choice, Jan 2011