State Crime, Native Americans and COVID-19

Abstract

This paper examines how COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Native Americans. It frames the problem as one of existing structural disadvantage that is the result of settler colonialism, showing a history of abuse and neglect in earlier pandemics. The US has an obligation to Native peoples that it is failing to uphold in numerous ways, including needed health care and resources to battle the virus. The paper describes how this is state crime in the form of slow violence.

COVID-19, global public health justice, and the culture of organized irresponsibility

“…Similarly, Donald Trump's handling of the pandemic in the US and its disproportionate impact on Native Americans led some scholars and commentators to speak of COVID-19 genocide and state crime by slow violence (Finchelstein & Stanley, 2021;Finley, 2021). More generally, assessments of the US government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted numerous shortfalls in both pandemic preparedness and pandemic response, with an emphasis on failures of policy and leadership as well as failure of healthcare (Altman, 2020;Carter & May, 2020;Gerstein, 2020;Mirvis, 2020).…”

Economic gaps and crimes among the States of Nigeria

“…Very recently, studies have investigated the risk of rising crimes among the vulnerable groups by linking economic depravity caused by Coronavirus to crimes (Castro et al, 2020; Finley, 2021; Gordon & Green, 2021; Ritter, 2021). One common outcome of the existing studies is evidence for a strong relationship between economic deprivation and crimes.…”