Green Criminology 1

1.1. Scope
Green criminology suggests the necessity of reappraising more traditional notions of crimes,
offences and injurious behaviours requiring scholars and practitioners to examine the role that
societies (including corporations and governments) play in generating environmental
degradation.

Green criminology expands the scope of criminology by addressing forms of crime that harm the
environment that are ordinarily excluded from criminological research. Environmental harm
violates a variety of types of law (criminal, regulator, administrative, civil and criminal), and
some may be beyond the current scope of law.

1.2. Purpose
The purpose of green criminology is to provide a space within criminology to examine the nexus
between environmental problems, the definition of harms against nature as crimes, the need to
reconsider criminal justice practice and policy in relationship to the environmental harms they
produce, the variety of victims environmental offenses create (for human and non human
species, as well as ecological segments such as wetlands, forests, air and land), and the effect of
environmental toxins on ecological systems and species’ health and behaviour.1

1.3. Importance
Why should criminologists be interested in green criminology or the study of the environmental
harms, crimes, laws, policy and justice?

1. One goal of criminology is to reduce crime so as to mitigate human suffering. The

criminological notion of crime, however, is often restricted to criminal definitions, which
are small fractions of harms that occur in society. Criminology has struggled with its
concept of harm over time, extending the boundaries of criminology more than once to
include omitted behaviours, as white collar, corporate and domestic harms. There is little
reason that green harms cannot be included within criminology in the same way as other
harms.

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2. In the contemporary world, green harms are widespread and more prevalent than the
ordinary crimes criminologists examine. The National Crime Victimization Survey of the
United States indicates that there are approximately 25 million criminal victimizations in
the United States annually. In comparison, on an average day, 90 million people are
exposed to air that violates legal standards- meaning that in one day and from one
environmental harm there are 3.6 times more environmental victimizations than the
annual level of street victimizations.
3. Criminologists have produced significant knowledge that can be applied to the study and
control of green harms, and they may be able to discover important clues about the causes
of crime by studying green harms.2

Definition

There is no singular definition of green criminology. Rather than having a formal definition,
green criminology has been shaped by studies researchers have identified as relevant to green
perspective, and green criminology has demonstrated flexibility in examining green crimes,
harms, victims and justice from various perspectives.

However, the question that arises is: Does green criminology allow for the application of a green
perspective to mainstream criminal justice issues, or is green criminology solely a tool for
applying criminological perspectives to distinctly green crimes?

2.1. Lynch and Stretesky’s analysis- a study of identification and

examination
The basic concern of green criminology is to identify and examine the forms of victimization,
harms, crime, law and justice that relate to and stem from damages to the natural environment.
These issues may be local, national or global in scope and effects.3

According to them, green criminology essentially begins with an environmental frame of

reference that examines

2
Id at 627
3
Id at 626

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1. Issues that have been of interest to criminologists in new ways (e.g., What is crime? What
causes crime? How can crime be controlled?)
2. Issues that have primarily been addressed within other disciplines (e.g., harms against
non human species, the problem of environmental justice, the extent of toxic waste
crimes and pollution and associated harms.)4

Green criminology research focuses on three broad types of victims: ecological, nonhuman and
human. These three broad categories include all possible direct and indirect victims and exclude
the more traditional legal notion of society and the state as crime victims. Traditional legal
definitions undermine viewing nonhumans as victims.5

2.2. Potter’s definition- an inculcation of criminology in analysis of

environmental harm
According to Dr Gary R. Potter,6 Green Criminology is the analysis of environmental harms
from a criminological perspective, or the application of criminological thought to environmental
issues. As elsewhere in criminology, this means thinking about offences (what crimes or harms
are inflicted on the environment, and how), offenders (who commits crime against the
environment, and why) and victims (who suffers as a result of environmental damage, and how),
and also about responses to environmental crimes: policing, punishment and crime prevention.
On a more theoretical level, green criminology is interested in the social, economic and political
conditions that lead to environmental crimes; on a philosophical level it is concerned with which
types of harms should be considered as ‘crimes’ and therefore within the remit of a green
criminology.7

2.3. White’s observation- the examination of eco-global environmental

crimes and their complexity
Rob White observes, given the potential for environmental harms to extend far beyond the
impact on individual victims that are the norm with ‘traditional’ crimes of interpersonal violence
and property crime, green crimes should be given importance if not priority within justice

4
Ibid
5
Ibid
6
London South Bank University, UK
7
\

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systems. Eco-global crimes such as the illegal trade in wildlife, pollution crimes and
environmental harm are of significance not just because they are crimes that have a global reach
and impact on both existing communities and future generations, but also because they affect and
involve a range of nation states and different justice systems. By considering these issues, green
criminology examines complex issues in criminological enquiry that extend beyond the narrow
confines of individualistic crime which dominate criminological discourse and are the main
focus of criminal justice policy. Simply put, green criminology thinks bigger.8

2.4. An attempt at an Analytical Definition

Potter’s conception suggests that green criminology is concerned not just with distinctly
environmental crimes but also with how studying green crimes can help to improve criminology.
White, on the other hand, identifies eco-global criminology as a discipline requiring transnational
and comparative research to identify differences and commonalities between nation-states
‘whether related to pollution wildlife or other issues’.

To answer my question, green criminology allows for both, the application of criminological
theories and principles to green crimes as well as the reimagining of criminological principles
and justice issues in a green way.

Thus, green criminology encompasses three major aspects:

• The analysis of environmental harms- their effects, victims, reasons for occurrence and
mechanisms for punishment and prevention.
• The analysis of criminological aspects with an environmental frame of reference- the
effect of environmental degradation on the committing of crimes.
• The study of the impact of environmental harm beyond the realm of an individual- its
effect on human as well as ecological and non human entities, globally.

EMERGENCES

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The first work on green criminology was published in 1990 by Michael J. Lynch. Follow up
work on that topic was presented in a book by Frank and Lynch (1992), Corporate Crime,
Corporate Violence.

But it was no until 1998 with the publication of a special issue on Green Criminology by Piers
Beirne and Nigel South that interest in green criminology began to spread more widely. Thus, in
broader terms, green criminology has only been more widely recognized for the past 17 years.9

3.1. ‘Environmental Crime’ or ‘Green Crime’

What constitutes a ‘crime’ varies between different societies and over different times. Green
criminologists make the point that most environmental harms incorporate harms to individuals
and social groups and that many entail human rights abuses.

Strict Legalist View

The strict legalist view is that crime is whatever the criminal law defines it as being by
specifying those actions prohibited under the law.

Social Legal Perspective

An alternative approach to animal and environmental legislation sometimes advocated by
activists is the social legal perspective which argues that some acts, especially by corporations,
‘may not violate the criminal law yet are so violent in their expression or harmful in their effects
to merit definition as crimes’ (Situ and Emmons, 2000). This approach ‘focuses on the
construction of crime definitions by various segments of society and the political process by
which some gain ascendancy, becoming embodied in the law.

Thus, like other crimes, green crimes are a social construction influenced by:

 social locations
 power relations in society
 definitions of environmental crimes
 media
 political process10

9
Michael J. Lynch, Green Criminology, available at http://greencriminology.org/950-2/ last seen on 20/1/2016

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Widespread Effect of Green Crimes

Green crimes and harms are much more widespread than criminal harms. Green harms cause
extraordinary level of harm compared to street crime. These harms impact ecosystems, alter the
very nature of the world around us, and result in a magnification of harm because direct
ecological harms are multiplied when species come into contact with environmental toxins and
pollution.11

3.2. Legal activities deemed as ‘environmental crime’

While green criminology takes a critical look at the issue of environmental harms and abuse of
animals, not all things considered to contravene environmental protection norms or offend
notions of green morality are crimes. The reality is that many things that NGOs and others object
to are perfectly legal and there is an argument that only those things defined by criminal law as
offences can really be classed as green crimes.12

Many green criminologists extend their interests to include legal activities deemed harmful to the
environment. Indeed for many environmental criminologists harm to the environment is the
defining feature of their subject matter. Only a minority of instances of environmental harm are
accounted for by criminal activity- the vast majority of fishing, deforestation, pollution and so on
are actually legal, and are often seen as important economic activity.

More traditionally-minded criminologists do not see this sort of activity as the business of
criminology at all. But radical and critical criminologists and sociologists have long challenged
narrow, legalistic definitions of crime.

3.3. Types of Green Crimes

Green crimes can be both direct and indirect harms. The direct forms of harm affect the
ecosystem. Indirect harms are a consequence of direct harms. Direct harms to the ecosystem
produce indirect harms to wide variety of species that live in ecosystems.13

10
Supra 10
11
Supra 3 at 625
12
Supra 10
13
Supra 3 at 627

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Direct Harms
The variety of green harms and crime which green criminology draws attention to include direct
harms such as land, water and air pollution; mining and timber crimes; and wildlife crimes.
These direct harms are extensive in themselves but are also important because they produce
indirect harms to a wide variety of species.14

Indirect Harms
The indirect harms associated with green crimes include behaviour effects that may help explain
crime. Medical, biological, epidemiological and toxicological research has demonstrated that
exposure to toxins produces a wide variety of outcomes (e.g., low IQ, learning deficiencies,
deficiencies in control and aggression) that criminological theories posit as causes of crime.
Green criminology notes that one of the mechanisms that may explain the occurrence of these
proximate causes of crime is exposure to environmental toxins. Moreover, the unequal
distribution of toxins exposed by environmental justice research can help explain class, race and
ethnic differences in crime15

3.4. Victims of legal Environmental Crimes

People lose their livelihoods, property and way of life as traditional lands are cleared for
agriculture or development. We can count millions of avoidable deaths around the globe that are
linked to preventable environmental problems, such as the absence of clean drinking water or
exposure to pollutants. It is nearly always the poorest people of the world who suffer most from
environmental harms, and it is almost always the case that the rich corporations responsible for
much harm avoid any kind of criminal or other repercussions. The situation where the poor are
the victims of harmful activity perpetrated by the rich, but where that activity is not readily
defined as a crime (and therefore the perpetrators are not treated as criminals), relates as strongly
to environmental issues as it does to corporate crime or state crime. Green criminology is merely
following a well-established criminological tradition in this sense.16

14
Ibid
15
Ibid
16
Supra 1

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White identifies that third parties such as NGOs often play a significant role in investigating and
exposing environmental harm and offending and have become a necessity for effective
environmental law enforcement.

Animal Abuse and Speciesism

Animal abuse and speciesism have become legitimate fields of study for green criminology in
part because of the widespread nature of criminal activities that victimize animals but also
because of growing evidence of the links between animal abuse and human violence.

Green criminology explores these issues in depth actively considering the link between crimes
against the environment and non-human animals and mainstream criminology while critically
evaluating what is known about environmental criminality. However, green criminology also
considers the moral dimension of harms against animals that are legal but which should be made
illegal. As a result, green criminology provides a means for examining fringe areas of policing
and criminality and applying critical thought to these issues. Green criminologists are, therefore
often in the position of challenging contemporary criminal justice ideas and their theories
provide a new way of looking at contemporary criminal justice problems.17

Theories of Green Criminology

According to White, there is no green criminology theory as such. He explains, “… as
observed by South (1998), there is what can loosely be described as a green ‘perspective’.
Elements of this perspective generally include things such as a concern with specifically
environmental issues, social justice, ecological consciousness, the destructive nature of global
capitalism, the role of the nation state (and regional and global regulatory bodies), and inequality
and discrimination as these relate to class, gender, race and nonhuman animals”.18

4.1 Angus Nurse: A compilation of various thoughts on environmental and ecological justice

17
Supra 10
18
\

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According to Angus Nurse in Critical Perspectives on Green Criminology, green criminology is

really an umbrella term for a number of theories that combine to make a green perspective on
crime, as follows.

Environmental justice
Environmental justice refers to the distribution of environments in terms of access to and use of
natural resources. This broad term can be split into several different aspects of justice for the
environment which include: Eco-feminism, Environmental Racism and the Red-Green
Movement.

Eco-feminism
Eco-feminism was originally conceived as connecting ecology and women in a manner that
integrates environmental feminism and women’s spirituality concerns (Spretnak 1990). The
paradigm criticised capitalist profit-growth orientation and the patriarchy, where male concerns
often lead to environmental harms. It also connects the domination and exploitation of nature
with that of women, arguing that women are more concerned with survival than men. Eco-
feminism would argue that all forms of dominance are connected and that environmental
equality could be achieved by returning to small-scale local economies, grass roots democracy
and reorienting cultural values (Lynch and Stretesky, 2003).19

Environmental Racism
Environmental Racism simultaneously advocates for Environmental Justice and the elimination
of racial discrimination in environmental decisions. This perspective argues that toxic factories,
pollution and waste sites affect communities of colour more than Caucasians and that people of
colour have a long history of struggling for environmental justice (Turner and Pei Wu, 2002).
Within this perspective, criminology examines the conception that environmental protection
exists primarily for the benefit of the elite who predominantly have access to rural areas and the
benefits of a healthy environment; something often denied to poorer groups in which ethnic
minorities are disproportionately represented.20

19
Supra 10
20
Ibid

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The Red-green Movement

The Red-green Movement relates economic oppression to environmental degradation (Lynch and
Stretesky, 2003). It applies a Marxist contextualisation to environmental harms arguing that
environmental problems disproportionately affect the working class and poor as a product of the
class society. Red-green perspectives on environmental justice consider methods of production
and decision-making that exclude the working class effectively disengaging them from
environmental concerns. Thus any green revolution must begin in the workplace and empower
workers with environmental responsibility and a tangible interest in protecting the
environment.21

Ecological Justice
Ecological Justice, according to Angus Nurse, acknowledges that human beings are only one part
of the planet and that any system of justice needs to consider the wider biosphere and species
which depend on nature. Species justice discourse falls within ecological justice and considers
the responsibility man owes to other species as part of broader ecological concerns. Man, as the
dominant species on the planet, has considerable potential to destroy nonhuman animals, or,
through effective laws and criminal justice regimes, to provide for effective animal protection.
This includes animal rights, aspects of animal protection and criminality which impacts
negatively on a range of nonhuman animals. Contemporary criminal justice needs to extend
beyond traditional human ideals of justice as a punitive or rehabilitative ideal, to incorporate
shared concepts of reparative and restorative justice between humans and non-human animals. In
effect, the criminal justice system needs to be modified to provide for a broad criminal justice
perspective, justice for all sentient beings, not just for humans.22

4.1. Lynch and Paul B. Stretesky: Examination of the interrelation and

interdependence of criminology and environmental perspectives
Lynch and Stretsky (2007) stated four problems with which green criminology should be
concerned:

i. Critical examination of environmental policies and offering meaningful alternatives

where appropriate.
21
Ibid
22
Ibid

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ii. Environmental justice and the unequal distribution of environmental hazards across
diverse races and classes.
iii. The health impacts of exposure to environmental toxins.
iv. The links between toxic exposure and criminal behaviour, for example, associated
between lead, cadmium and mercury and behavioural changes that produce increases
in aggression and violence.23

Laws and Regulations

At the most obvious level, green criminology has law and regulatory implications at the local,
state, national and even international levels with respect to defining and addressing ecological
harms. The goals of environmental laws and regulations- controlling, preventing and eliminating
environmental harms- may involve both direct and indirect environmental consequences.24

Criminological knowledge could be applied to environmental laws and regulations and the
control of environmental harms. In this sense, green criminology involves expanding
criminological knowledge to the environmental arena. A wide variety of questions can be
addressed by green criminology with respect to environmental policy, illustrating the importance
of green criminology in protecting the natural and built environment, people, and species from
harmful pollutants. Examples are these: How should pollution be regulated? What activities
should be targeted? Are there alternative control and regulatory responses for controlling air
pollution produced by factories or automobiles or for promoting alternative energy? These and
many other questions are part of the policy analysis issues green criminology can address. 25

Controlling Crime
Some pollutants affect human behaviour and many promote crime. Can environmental policies
aid in the control of crime? How? Does controlling crime in this way make sense theoretically
and fiscally? Are these kinds of environmental policies a necessary dimension of a well

23
Nigel South, Green Criminology: Theories, Concepts and Connected Meanderings, available at
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/static/5007/sasspdf/2523584.pdf last seen on 20/1/2016.
24
Supra 3 at 628
25
Ibid

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conceived, broad reaching crime control strategy? Again, these kinds of questions illustrate the
relevance of green criminology to addressing crime control policy.26

Criminal Justice Policy

Green criminology offers a unique perspective on criminal justice policies. Ordinarily,
criminology views criminal justice policy only with respect to crime control effectiveness and
efficiency concerns related to the impact of criminal justice policy not only affects crime, but the
natural world as well.27

For example: Criminological interest in policing focuses on improving its crime control
functions. In a green view, however, the issue is not just controlling crime but also employing
strategies that diminish the environmental impacts of policing. Contemporary policing in the
United States is accomplished primarily around centralized police departments and the patrol
vehicle, which is often a highway cruiser. Much police work doesn’t require the use of a cruiser,
which for most police purposes is inefficient from an environmental standpoint. Given these
conditions, green criminology would examine promoting decentralization of policing, the use of
smaller, more effective vehicles for many routine functions (e.g., traffic control and patrolling)
and eco efficient design of community police stations (e.g., the use of solar energy to generate
power not only for police use but also to fuel city street lights). For green criminologists in short,
attention is directed toward crime control strategies that are also eco friendly. 28

4.2. Application of existing criminological theories to green criminology

As White reminds us, much environmental crime and harm is perpetrated by states, as well as by
powerful groups and organizations such as transnational corporations. Accordingly, green
criminologists have endeavoured to understand how and why such entities have engaged in
environmentally harmful practices. For example, Stretesky (2006) has drawn on rational choice
and deterrence theories of crime to determine the likelihood that regulated entities will
discover, disclose and correct environmental violations under the United States Environmental
Protection Agency’s (EPA) Self‐Policing Policy.29

26
Ibid
27
Ibid
28
Ibid
29
Ibid

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As White explains, Environmental crime is studied for a reason; namely, we need to understand
the genesis and dynamics of such crime so that we can adequately respond to it. More work
needs to be done to understand the nature and scope of environmental harm. White continues,
“and to this I add that more research needs to be undertaken to understand the ways in which
environmental crime and harm are constructed by and represented in the media and the ways
those constructions and representations affect how we ascribe meaning to the environment, to
nature, and to harms and crimes thereto.”30

4.3. Green Crimes and its dealing by the Justice System

How the justice system should deal with green crimes and criminality is a core concern of green
criminology, particularly given their lack of prominence within general criminal justice policy
discourse. Rob White (2007) identifies the following three approaches:

i. The Socio-legal approach – which emphasises use of the current criminal law and
attempts to improve the quality of investigation, law enforcement, prosecution and
conviction of illegally-environmentally related activity.
ii. The Regulatory Approach – An emphasis on social regulation, using many different
means as the key mechanism to prevent and curtail environmental harm. This attempts to
reform existing systems of production and consumption using enforced self-regulation
and bringing NGOs into the regulatory process.
iii. The Social Action Approach – Emphasis on need for social change predominantly
through democratic institutions and citizen participation.

According to Angus Nurse, White’s approaches reflect the fact that most jurisdictions have
environmental regulations which seek to address environmental harms, and some form of animal
protection law, providing legal protection for both companion and wild animals. However the
approach to enforcement varies across jurisdictions and green criminology’s critical evaluation
of enforcement and policy effectiveness, from both a theoretical and practical perspective, has
identified significant failings in implementation of environmental and ecological justice
concerns.

30
Ibid

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In practice environmental regulations are often poorly enforced, while animal protection
legislation may protect animals only in certain circumstances and from certain activities while
retaining their subservience to human interests. Thus, while the need for improved standards of
animal protection legislation has generally been adopted at least by western legislators, criminal
justice systems often fail to afford priority to effective enforcement of wildlife legislation.
Instead this becomes the responsibility of NGOs or civil justice agencies and the level of
enforcement is heavily dependent on NGOs ideological concerns and availability of resources.

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