Green Criminology: Crime Against The Environment

Green Crime * This is crime(s) against the environment. * Traditionally criminology focuses on whether a law has been broken – a crime is something that breaks the law. * Green criminology starts from the notion of harm rather than the breaking of law. * Rob White (2008) – subject of criminology is one that harms the physical environment and/or the human and non human animals within it. * The world is a single eco-system. E.g. Atmospheric pollution from industry in one country can turn into acid rain that falls in another. * Accident in the nuclear industry can spread radioactive material over thousands of miles – Chernobyl in Ukraine – 1986 * Beck (1992) argues – today we can provide adequate resources for all
fly tipping, picking rare flowers and trafficking in endangered animals by individuals, pollution and fly-tipping caused by businesses and pollution, transportation and dump of waste material committed by governments. * Whaling should also be considered as a crime – environmentalists say. * Two views of harm: * 1) General Nation’s states and transnational corporations – adopt what White (2008) calls an anthropocentric or human centred view of the environmental harm – humans have a right to dominate nature and economic growth comes first. * 2) An ecocentric view sees humans and their environment as interdependent – if something hurts the environment then it hurts humans as well. * Both humans and the environment and liable to exploitation, particularly by global capitalism. * Types of green crime: Primary crimes; crimes that a due directly to the destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources e.g. crimes of air pollution – burning fossil fuels from industry and transport. Potential criminals are governments, businesses and consumers. Secondary crimes; crimes that grow out of the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulation environmental harms. State violence against oppositional groups is a form of secondary crime. States condemn terrorism but they have been prepared to resort to similar illegal methods
* Another example is the disposal of hazardous toxic waste and organized crime. * Evaluation of green criminology. * It recognises the growing importance of environmental issues and the need to address the harms and risks of environmental damage, both to humans and non-human animals. However, because it focuses on harms instead of just legally defined crimes it is hard to define the boundaries of its study. * State Crime * State crime – crime committed by the government such as a war crime, genocide, imprisonment without trial and torture. * Area of interest to Marxist sociologists. They see government as controlled or heavily influence by the bourgeoisie. It would be a mistake to think that only Marxists are interested in state crimes and much of the investigative work is done by