Green Crime

Transgressive Criminology

  • Looks at wider definitions of crime, considering the harm caused, not just the breaking of state laws.

Anthropocentric View

  • Focuses on harm to the environment from a human perspective.

  • Pollution is a problem because it damages the human water supply and causes diseases, leading to expensive solutions.

  • Climate change is a problem because of its impact on people and the economic costs of addressing it.

Ecocentric View

  • Considers harm to any aspect of the environment as harm to all of it.

  • Crimes like animal cruelty or habitat destruction are green crimes, regardless of specific human costs.

Globalisation and Green Crime

  • Environmental crimes are global, with actions in one location having knock-on effects worldwide.

Policing Green Crime

  • Difficult because an act may not be a crime in one location but affect another.

  • Identifying blame can also be challenging.

Definitions of Green Crime

Traditional Criminology

  • Situ and Emmons (2000) define green crime as an unauthorised act or omission that violates the law of a state or nation.

  • Similar to other crime studies, it looks at patterns and causes of lawbreaking.

  • This definition would not consider global warming or acid rain as crimes since they don't break laws.

Transgressive Criminology

  • Focuses more on the harm caused by certain acts to determine criminality.

  • White (2008) argues that green crime is any action that harms the physical environment and/or human/non-human animals, even if no law has been broken.

Global and Manufactured Risk

  • Beck (1992) argues that society now has the resources for the developing world, but technology creates new manufactured risks, harming the environment and humans.

  • Greenhouse gases from manufacturing lead to global warming, which is global rather than local.

Types of Green Crime

Key Thinker

  • Nigel South (2014)

Type 1: Primary Green Crime

  • Explanation: Crimes that are the direct result of the destruction and degradation of the Earth's resources.

  • Examples: Air pollution, deforestation, species decline, animal abuse, and water pollution.

Type 2: Secondary Green Crime

  • Explanation: Crimes resulting from the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters.

  • Examples: State violence against environmental groups, hazardous waste, organised crime, and environmental discrimination.

Victims of Green Crime

Key Thinker

  • Wolf

  • Those in the developing world, the poor, and ethnic minorities are more likely to be victims due to an inability to move from areas like toxic dumping sites.

Perpetrators of Green Crime

Key Thinker:

  • Individuals, Businesses, Governments, Organised Crime

Individuals

  • Individuals have a cumulative effect on the environment; their acts may not have an immediate impact, but soon add up. E.g., littering or fly-tipping.

Businesses

  • Environmental crime is a typical form of corporate crime; large corporations are responsible for the majority of water, air, and land pollution due to waste dumping and health and safety breaches.

Governments

  • Santana (2002) points out that the military is the biggest institutional polluter through unexploded bombs and the lasting effects of toxic chemicals.

Organised Crime

  • Organised crime has a longstanding relationship with green crime, often in collusion with governments and industry through contracts for waste disposal, for example.

Evaluation

  • It is very difficult to study green crime as there is no agreed-upon definition.

  • It is also difficult to assess the impact of green crime, as it can have a long-term impact.

  • Much of the research is based on case studies.

  • Green crime can be accompanied by greater value judgments due to a lack of agreed-upon definitions.