Criminology 9/11. Issue 7 (2nd October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: de Lint, Willem
• Is Part Of: Globalizations. Volume 17:Issue 7(2020)
• Page Start: 1157
• Page End: 1177
• Publication Date: 2020-10-02
• Subjects: 9/11 -- critical criminology -- political crime -- disciplinary knowledge; Globalization -- Periodicals; 327.17
• DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2019.1655933
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1474-7731

Abstract

ABSTRACT: 9/11 is a historically significant event that was hastily designated by authorities as an act of both terrorism and war. It led to a call for forensics investigations and commissions of inquiry, notably the 9/11 Commission, which reported famously on alleged lapses in intelligence, preparedness and bureaucratic imagination. Some high profile crime events may be understood as 'apex crimes', conceptualized here as a subtype of political crime in which the ideological order, official narrative, contested and problematic forensics and third party review are each constitutive features. In support of a sociology of 9/11 as a criminal event and apex crime, the paper considers how 9/11 has 'played out' or been understood in criminology. The implication of the analysis is that the absence of serious academic engagement with 9/11 as a crime event is indicative of a lack of critical scrutiny of high-level political crimes in scholarly discourse (in criminology and other disciplines) and that this gives a pass to one of the most significant crime events in the past 50 years.