The International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) is a community of scholars working to expose, document, explain, and resist state crime. As an interdisciplinary forum for research, reportage and debate, ISCI aims to combine rigorous academic research with emancipatory activism. ISCI is based a

one of its four partner institutions. The others are th
University of Hull

Ulster University sco, Ulstèr Universitie , image = Ulster University coat of arms.png , caption = , motto_lang = , mottoeng = , latin_name = Universitas Ulidiae , established = 1865 – Magee College 1953 - Magee Un ...

and the

Harvard Humanitarian Initiative The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is an interfaculty Harvard University initiative dedicated to advancing research, practice, and policy in the field of humanitarian assistance. HHI's mission is "to relieve human suffering in war and disa ...

. ISCI was previously based at King's College London until 1 September 2014.

History

Despite being subject to scrutiny by a variety of disciplines, state crime has traditionally been ignored by criminology. ISCI's founders, Professor Penny Green and Dr Tony Ward, remarked in 2005, that "considering the contribution of state agencies to the world's homicide rates and the scale of their economic crimes, the space devoted to state crime in the literature of our discipline remains pitifully small" (Green and Ward 2005: 432). Green, Ward, and a group of graduate students at King's were joined by colleagues at Harvard and the University of Ulster in the initiative, which was launched in June 2010 at King's College London, with a keynote address by ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

''s Middle East correspondent,

Robert Fisk Robert Fisk (12 July 194630 October 2020) was a writer and journalist who held British and Irish citizenship. He was critical of United States foreign policy in the Middle East, and the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians. His stan ...

. During his address, "State of Denial: A Reporter in the Middle East", Fisk challenged the supposedly impartial reporting espoused by international media outlets such as the BBC. Fisk's lecture was followed by a photography and video exhibition by Yusuf Sayman, a New York/Istanbul based photographer whose photojournalism investigates the relationship between the individual and the state.

People

ISCI is coordinated by an executive board drawn from its four partner institutions. It has three honorary fellows;

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

John Pilger John Richard Pilger (; born 9 October 1939) is an Australian journalist, writer, scholar, and documentary filmmaker. He has been mainly based in Britain since 1962. He was also once visiting professor at Cornell University in New York. Pilge ...

, and

Richard Falk Richard Anderson Falk (born November 13, 1930) is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor's Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In 2004, he was listed as the autho ...

ISCI's research fellows, researchers, and friends all contribute to its research activities.

Journal

Many of ISCI's prominent associates currently sit on the board of ISCI's scholarly journal ''State Crime'', which was launched in October 2011 at King's College London by ISCI honorary fellow, Noam Chomsky. ''State Crime'' is the first peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary and international journal dedicated to state crime scholarship. The journal's focus is a reflection of the growing awareness within criminology that state criminality is endemic and acts as a significant barrier to security and development. Topics covered by the journal include, torture; genocide and other forms of government and politically organised

mass killing Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members withou ...

; war crimes; state-corporate crime; state-organised crime; natural disasters exacerbated by government (in)action; asylum and refugee policy and practice; state terror; political and economic corruption; and resistance to state violence and corruption. ''State Crime'' is published twice yearly b
Pluto Journals
the first edition having been published in April 2012.

Research

ESRC project

In 2011, ISCI was awarded £830,000 by the United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for a project entitled, ‘Resisting State Crime: A Comparative Study of Civil Society’ (ES/I030816/1). The project aims to study the role of civil society organisations in defining, censuring and resisting criminal acts committed, instigated or condoned by state agencies. It is a cross-cultural, comparative study which focuses on countries which are all undergoing processes of reconstruction following severe violent conflict, but which have very different levels of economic and political development. The project will explore the ‘life histories’ of a range of grass roots civil society organisations dedicated to challenging state violence and corruption. The study compares Burma, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Sierre Leone, Tunisia, and Turkey. Progress of the research can be monitore
here
In 2014, ISCI was awarded £200,000 by the ESRC under its 'Pilot Urgency Grants Mechanism'.

E-Pedagogy

ISCI has also been awarded funding by King's College, London and the Pluto Education Trust, to build an interactive website devoted to state crime studies. It will feature multi-media case studies developed by leading experts in the field, including Dr Chris Williams on working children in South Africa, Dr Hazel Cameron on the role of Britain and France in the Rwandan genocide, Peter Low on exploitation of mineral resources in Peru, Dr Kristian Lasslett on state

corporate crime In criminology, corporate crime refers to crimes committed either by a corporation (i.e., a business entity having a separate legal personality from the natural persons that manage its activities), or by individuals acting on behalf of a corpo ...

in Bougainville, and Thomas MacManus on Trafigura's dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast.

Events

Researching State Crime Methods Workshop

In April 2011, ISCI held a Research Methods Workshop at King's College, London. The workshop brought together international scholars from criminology, anthropology, international relations and sociology to explore, analyse and challenge the methodologies available to scholars of state criminality. The participants discussed the peculiar difficulties and successes of securing access to both authoritarian elites and vulnerable victims, negotiating translators, government minders, researcher uses of deception, the relationship between method and theory, and ethnographic experiences.

ISCI's launch event

In June 2013, ''The Independent''{{'s Middle East correspondent,

launched ISCI along with Yusuf Sayman, a New York-based photographer, who also held a photography and video exhibition. Fisk's lecture was entitled ‘State of Denial: A Reporter in the Middle East’ and covered a wide range of material on the recent and distant history of the Middle East, US and British policy in the region, the role of journalism in uncovering truth and the yearning of all peoples for the justice they are denied.