ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a number of the crimes of states, examining how they are organised, legitimised and carried out. War crimes and crimes against humanity are those proscribed by the Geneva and Hague Conventions, which have, since the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002, been enforced by that court in The Hague. The classic figureheads of European sociology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were preoccupied with understanding modernising societal development, which they generally saw as placing societies on a path towards increased peace, stability and civilisation. The Geneva and Hague Conventions established international laws and agreements to govern state conduct in war and they provide the backbone to International Humanitarian Law. ‘Repressive state crimes’ are those crimes outlawed by international human rights law, which governs state actions toward their own populations during peacetime. State–corporate collusion in crime is nothing new but it is a normal part of modern state-building.
