ABSTRACT

As this volume suggests, a growing number of critical criminologists around the world are committed to throwing light on illegal and unethical actions carried out by state, corporate, and organizational elites. Crimes by the powerful are particularly significant because of their immense reach and consequence. Michalowski and Kramer (2006) remind us that great power and great crime are inseparable:

It is only those with great political and economic power who can, with the stroke of a pen, the utterance of an order, or even a knowing nod of the head send thousands to their deaths or consign millions to lives of unrelenting want and misery. When economic and political powers pursue common interests, the potential for harm is magnified further. (p. 1)

Although there are varied definitions of state crimes alluding to governmental crime, political crime, and state-organized crime, it is generally agreed that such violations constitute “illegal, socially injurious [harmful], or unjust acts which are committed for the benefit of a state or its agencies, and not for the personal gain of some individual agent of the state” (Kauzlarich, Matthews, & Miller, 2001, p. 175; see Ross, 2000). That perspective on state crime similarly lends itself to an array of unlawful acts and human rights atrocities in the American war on terror (see Kramer, Michalowski, & Rothe, 2005; Welch, 2003). In this chapter, three instances of state crime occurring in the name of U.S. national security are examined: the unlawful enemy combatant designation, torture, and the American (and British) invasion of Iraq. As we proceed, it is important to remain mindful of key socio-legal transformations that serve to reconfigure state power, especially as it reproduces impunity (Agamben, 2005; Butler, 2004; Ericson, 2007). Certainly, what distinguishes state crimes from the run of the mill street-level offenses is their apparent immunity, adding to speculation that such crimes have no bounds (Welch, 2006a, 2007, 2009a).