Zemiological Approach

What benefits, if any, can a zemiological approach bring to the study of global crime and insecurity?

The advancement of globalisation, technological knowledge and global markets have created conditions for global crime and insecurity to flourish. Crime is constantly developing and adjusting across the world. These challenges pose the question of what approach is necessary to combat and prevent global crime and insecurity?

The Threat Assessment of Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2010 came to the following conclusion in relation to organized crime:

‘Since the problem of TOC cannot be resolved purely through arrests and seizures, it cannot be reduced to a criminal justice issue. The

166) Harms that can be caused by corporations include corporate fraud such as pension frauds, harms caused by working like death, injury and disease, exposedness to airborne pollutants and food poisoning.

Hillyard and Tombs (2007) state that applying a concept of crime to corporate harm is not compatible, on the grounds that administrative entities cannot be reduced to actions, motivations and objectives of an individual human representative who composes them. Hence, the zemiological approach might be more accurate to comprise mass harms caused by corporations (p. 19-20). For the study of global crime and insecurity this would mean that if the zemiological approach would be applied, a particular focus would be placed on collective and corporate responsibility.

Presented arguments and case studies indicate that an advantage of the zemiological approach is that it would broaden the scope of the analysis of global crime and insecurity. Meaning that this approach takes pressing concerns such as state and corporate harm and structural harms such as poverty into account as well. Moreover, Hillyard and Tombs (2007) state that this perspective allows to develop a more accurate description of what harms people encompass in their

This approach not only investigates who or what could be responsible for the caused harm, however, even more importantly acknowledges political and collective responsibility. In addition, the zemiological approach proposes the ‘allocation of responsibility in the failure to deal adequately with social problems’ (Hillyard and Tombs, 2008, p. 17). This would be beneficial for the study of global crime and insecurity. In so far as it raises questions of whether an individual person is responsible for a crime or harm committed or those who have been unsuccessful in eradicating underlying social problems in societies such as poverty or unemployment (Hillyard and Tombs, 2008).

In addition, the definition of harm by Pemberton mentioned in the first part of this essay also represents a benefit for the study of global crime and insecurity. The assumption that harm is caused as a result of how we organise our societies’ permits a different kind of perspective for the analysis of global crime and insecurity. I think this perspective could lead to rethinking of how we organise our societies and what could be changed to prevent causes of harm. However, social harms are difficult to measure and characterize which is distinguishable in the various definitions of social harm in the