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underfunded and/or understaffed (i.e., OSHA and the EPA) (Aulette and Michalowski 1993; Ross 2000a; Rothe and Mullins 2006b). Internal controls such as domestic laws and self-regulation arise within the state and are directed against itself.These mechanisms can be tangible (i.e., the firing of an employee) or symbolic (i.e., an official statement of denial or a promise to investigate). Internal controls are broadly viewed as restrictions placed on state agencies by themselves or by other state agencies. Examples of such internal controls include the United Kingdom’s 1977 establishment of a Royal Commission on Police Procedure and the establishment that same year of a Police Complaints Board in response to police brutality (Ross 2000c); the passage in 1984 of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act (Corrado and Davis 2000); the Zorea, Blatman, and Karp Commissions in Israel (Miller 2000); and the campaign finance reform laws in Japan (Potter 2000).All of these mechanisms were established in the wake of publicity generated by various criminal state practices—most of which involved the abuse of power by state-run agencies against their own citizens (Ross 2000a; Rothe and Mullins 2006a). External controls lie outside of a specific state apparatus (i.e., elected and appointed politicians and the bureaucracy) and are imposed on the state. To be effective, such controls actually have to exert some form of pressure and/or ability to penalize after the fact (i.e., in a political, economic, legal, or military way) on the state. External controls can be localized either within or outside of a state’s own sovereign territory. External controls within the state have included media organizations, interest groups, and domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Rothe and Mullins (2006a, 2007, 2008b) and, more recently, Ross and Rothe (2008) refer to these external agencies as constraints versus controls.The core problem with the efficacy of these types of constraints is the fact that they are not expected to act as an after-the-fact formal control in legal accountability or to fully block state or organizational criminogenic behaviors. Instead, by definition (Rothe and Mullins 2006a, 2007), they serve as potential barriers during an act or in response to an incident. Such pressures from these external constraints (e.g., media, citizenry, and interest groups) raise inherent contradictions within the United States and other countries. Simply put, while many reactions are supposedly citizen driven, they operate in a more elite-orientated fashion (Bacharach and Baratz 1962).As such, there is a contradiction between the ideal of modern democracy and the efficacy of these types of constraints. When media or other agencies specifically address these contradictions in a public sphere, the state feels compelled to respond through actions that are typically symbolic in nature and often involve the erection of new veils of secrecy (Edelman 1971). Moreover, constraints such as the media, popular opinion, and/or internal state obstacles can often be ignored or manipulated via hegemonic discourse, J e f f r e y I a n Ro s s 194 symbolic political gestures, or altering policy to immediately appease while continuing in a covert direction (Rothe and Mullins 2006b). The notion of the negative effects of controls has a long history. Some authors have suggested that there are limits of control (Peters 1989).According to Peters, “Aside from the average, garden-variety problems of administrative accountability and control, there are a number of more specialized problems and considerations that also deserve attention. In these cases the conventional mechanisms for public control and accountability are strained to their limits and are often exceeded” (276). In this context, he cites how the power of the professions , nationalized industries, unions, political structure, culture, and nonadministration can frustrate the ability of control efforts. In 1981 Gary Marx wrote a much-cited and reprinted article,“Ironies of Social Control:Authorities as Contributors to Deviance through Escalation, Nonenforcement and Covert Facilitation.”Marx describes the process and contexts whereby“authorities may play a role in generating deviance” (221). In particular, he outlined how law enforcement officers, as state agents, can frustrate legitimate attempts by citizens to fight for social justice by engaging in confrontation, failing to enforce the law, and using surreptitious methods to force state opponents to break the law and thus become subject to arrest or pacification.Similarly,Rothe and Mullins (2006a) noted that attempts to control or block state criminality can and have resulted in state actors finding illegitimate means to achieve their goals,thus sidestepping...

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