Environmental Crimes

1. Environmental crime refers to crime committed against the environment. Environmental crime relates to corporate and state crime through primary crimes, which are crimes that are currently legal under international law. These crimes cause long lasting damage to the environment such as pollution and deforestation. One example would be the explosion in the factory in Bhopal. Emmons argues that an environmental crime is an action that breaks the national or international law. 2. Differential association was developed by Sutherland whose initial studies were into white collar crime. The culture of the organisation which justifies committing illegal or dubious acts in order to achieve the organisations goals, is what causes all of the corporate and occupational crime. Aubert found that these white collar criminals had an ‘elaborate and widely accepted ideological rationalization for the offences’. Criminal practices were quite normal. This is a way of emphasising with the criminals and understand why they commit the crimes. 3. Emotion based responses link to occupational and corporate crime as they looks at the roles of emotions and masculinity in crime. Portony says that the thrill one gets from committing a crimes is what leads rich an powerful people to committing them. Crimes committed by companies and by individuals are explicable by thrill-seeking. This also link to masculinity as the dominating gender in high positions are male and so they all compete against each other. 4. Nelken applied labelling theory to corporate crime by looking at the works of the English family practitioner panels who investigate those accused of defrauding the NHS by over claiming. For example, a dentist admitted to fraud and the panel pleaded with him to retract his admission so it would not pass as a criminal prosecution. It applies also to corporate crime as negative labels are applied by powerful groups in society. 5. Merton’s anomie approach has been applied to