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Article: Legitimacy, Civil Society, And State Crime.
- Article from:
- Social Justice
- Article date:
- December 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Crime and Social Justice Associates. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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CRIMINOLOGY HAS TRADITIONALLY FOCUSED ON THE STATE AS AN ENFORCER OF rules, rather than as an observer or breaker of rules. A cursory glance at world events suggests, however, that genocide, torture, and war crimes, which are legally classed as "international crimes," punishable by any state regardless of where they occur, eclipse all other forms of violent crime. Together with the predatory activities of regimes such as the former military government of Nigeria, [1] they constitute (even by the most conventional of definitions) a major proportion of all serious crime. Such crimes are generally committed by or with the complicity of state agencies, or by state-like ...