Hurricane Katrina Victimization as a State Crime of Omission

Abstract

Several popular narratives assign responsibility to a host of political officials on the local, state, and federal levels for the excess human suffering stemming from Hurricane Katrina. The three main goals of this article are to (1) summarize these claims and situate them within the burgeoning literature on state crime in criminology, (2) discern what victims of the hurricane subjectively identify as the source(s) of their victimization, and (3) compare the latter and the former in order to demonstrate the appropriateness of conceptualizing the excess suffering of Hurricane Katrina victims as a state crime of omission. We explore these three subjects through documentary analysis and interviews with thirteen victims of Hurricane Katrina. Major findings are that all of the interviewees express profound dissatisfaction with various state actions and inactions before, during, and after Katrina in ways consistent with the documentary and polling data. This constellation of similar claims and evidence along with the obvious social injury caused by multiple state failures provide the basis for conceptualizing governmental negligence in the context of Katrina as a state crime of omission.Hurricane Katrina hit the United States Gulf Coast on Monday, August 29, 2005. Tens of millions of people then watched with astonishment as the disaster in New Orleans unfolded. After the hurricane had passed, the situation quickly began to deteriorate further as the breeched levees could do nothing to stop the flow of Lake Pontchartrain into the lowlying areas of the city. Flood levels as high as fifteen feet in some areas left people stranded on rooftops for days and poor evacuation and relief planning resulted in inhuman conditions at both the New Orleans Superdome and the Convention Center. All told, at least 1,400 people died, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, were displaced, rendered homeless and/or unemployed, basic necessities such as clean water, access to health care, and food were scarce, and most children no longer had schools to attend. Depression,

Devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a state crime: social audience reactions

“…Objective evidence of violation of human rights Due to the precarious below sea-level elevation and intricate system of levees in the city of New Orleans, its disaster forecasters and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were aware that a hurricane could have devastating effects on the area [11,12]. For this reason FEMA organized a hurricane simulation exercise in 2004 to determine exactly what would happen if the area were indeed struck by a hurricane.…”

“…For this reason FEMA organized a hurricane simulation exercise in 2004 to determine exactly what would happen if the area were indeed struck by a hurricane. This exercise became known as Hurricane Pam [8,12]. Hurricane Pam revealed that the area would be devastated in the wake of even a category three hurricane.…”

“…In the years since Hurricane Katrina several reports have admitted that the levee failure was not only predictable but also preventable [8,30]. In addition to the levee breeches and subsequent flooding, FEMA and various levels of government were also criticized for the slow evacuation of residents from the devastated city [11,12,17,31].…”

“…With regards to the state's response to Hurricane Katrina, much of the suffering, deprivation, and loss of human life could have been prevented [11,12,17]. This sentiment is echoed in the U.S. House of Representatives Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina report (titled "A Failure of Initiative"), which among other findings, states that "[t]he failure to complete evacuations led to preventable deaths, great suffering, and further delays in relief" [8].…”

“…Next, we review the literature that provides objective evidence of human rights violations in the Katrina case. Then we present the subjective evidence of negative audience reactions to government response efforts after the storm from Faust and Kauzlarich [12]. This leads to our logistic regression analyses of data on disapproval of the handling of the situation after Hurricane Katrina by government officials from two sources-a national public opinion survey and a survey conducted with Katrina victims in the Houston Astrodome.…”