A fundamental problem within state crime scholarship surrounds the way in which state violence and corruption come to be defined and labelled as criminal, since states rarely criminalise their own activities. Should 'crime' be conceptualized as a legal construct - something defined and punished by domestic and international courts - or is it better understood as a violation of social norms that may or may not reflect legal definitions?
Building on four years of international field research in Turkey, Tunisia, Burma/Myanmar, Colombia, Kenya and Papua New Guinea, this book considers how...