Green criminology: shining a critical lens on environmental harm

Green criminology provides for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary engagement with environmental crimes and wider environmental harms. Green criminology applies a broad ‘‘green’’ perspective to environmental harms, ecological justice, and the study of environmental laws and criminality, which includes crimes affecting the environment and non-human nature. Within the ecological justice and species justice perspectives of green criminology there is a contention that justice systems need to do more than just consider anthropocentric notions of criminal justice, they should also consider how justice systems can provide protection and redress for the environment and other species. Green criminological scholarship has, thus, paid direct attention to theoretical questions of whether and how justice systems deal with crimes against animals and the environment; it has begun to conceptualize policy perspectives that can provide contemporary ecological justice alongside mainstream criminal justice. Moving beyond mainstream criminology’s focus on individual offenders, green criminology also explores state failure in environmental protection and corporate offending and environmentally harmful business practices. A central discussion within green criminology is that of whether environmental harm rather than environmental crime should be its focus, and whether green ‘‘crimes’’ should be seen as the focus of mainstream criminal justice and dealt with by core criminal justice agencies such as the police, or whether they should be considered as being beyond the mainstream. This article provides an introductory overview that complements a multi- and inter-disciplinary article collection dedicated to green criminological thinking and research

CITES, wild plants, and opportunities for crime

The illegal trade in endangered plants damages both the environment and local communities by threatening and destroying numerous species and important natural resources. There is very little research which systematically addresses this issue by identifying specific opportunities for crime. This article presents the results of an interdisciplinary study which brings together criminological and conservation science expertise to identify criminal opportunities in the illegal wild plant trade and suggest strategies in order to prevent and mitigate the problem. Methodologically, the study adapts a crime proofing of legislation approach to the UN Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and is based on documentary and interview data. Situational crime prevention is used as a framework to provide points for effective intervention

Green Criminology Before ‘Green Criminology’: Amnesia and Absences

Although the first published use of the term ‘green criminology’ seems to have been made by Lynch (Green criminology. Aldershot, Hampshire, 1990/2006), elements of the analysis and critique represented by the term were established well before this date. There is much criminological engagement with, and analysis of, environmental crime and harm that occurred prior to 1990 that deserves acknowledgement. In this article, we try to illuminate some of the antecedents of green criminology. Proceeding in this way allows us to learn from ‘absences’, i.e. knowledge that existed but has been forgotten. We conclude by referring to green criminology not as an exclusionary label or barrier but as a symbol that guides and inspires the direction of research

The employment of migrant nannies in the UK: negotiating social class in an open market for commoditised in-home care

Migrant women are important sources of labour in the commoditised in-home childcare sector in many regions of the UK. Jobs in this sector, which include nannies as well as au pairs, babysitters, housekeepers and mothers' helps, are often low paid and low status with pay and conditions being determined by employers' circumstances and whims. This article draws on primary data and secondary sources to illustrate the ways in which employers compare migrant nannies with British nannies and other childcare workers in terms of the social class and formal education levels of different groups, with the aim of explaining why migrants are perceived as high-quality candidates for what are often low-paid, low-status jobs. I argue that employers negotiate inter-class relations in this gendered form of employment by understanding their relationship with the migrant nannies they have employed in the context of broader global inequalities—these inequalities are then reproduced and reaffirmed in private homes and across UK culture and society

Geographies of landscape: Representation, power and meaning

Green criminology has sought to blur the nature-culture binary and this article seeks to extend recent work by geographers writing on landscape to further our understanding of the shifting contours of the divide. The article begins by setting out these different approaches, before addressing how dynamics of surveillance and conquest are embedded in landscape photography. It then describes how the ways we visualize the Earth were reconfigured with the emergence of photography in the 19th century and how the world itself has been transformed into a target in our global media culture

Creative Compliance, Constructive Compliance: Corporate Environmental Crime and the Criminal Entrepreneur

Purpose While corporations may embrace the concepts of social and environmental responsibility, numerous examples exist to show corporations claiming to act sustainably and responsibly, while simultaneously showing disregard for the communities in which they operate and causing considerable environmental damage. This chapter argues that such activities illustrate a particular notion of Baumol’s (1990) criminal entrepreneurialism where both creative and constructive compliance combine to subvert environmental regulation and its enforcement. Design/methodology/approach This chapter employs a case study approach assessing the current corporate environmental responsibility landscape against the reality of corporate environmental offending. Its case study shows seemingly repeated environmental 'offending' by Shell Oil against a backdrop of the company claiming to have integrated environmental monitoring and scrutiny into its operating procedures. Findings The chapter concludes that corporate assertion of environmental credentials is itself often a form of criminal entrepreneurship where corporations embrace voluntary codes of practice and self-regulation while internally promoting the drive for success and profitability and/or avoidance of the costs of true environmental compliance deemed too high. As a result this chapter argues that responsibility for environmental damage requires regulation to ensure corporate responsibility for environmental damage. Originality/value The chapter employs a green criminological perspective to its analysis of corporate social responsibility and entrepreneurship. Thus it considers not just strict legal definitions of crime and criminal behaviour but also the overlap between the legal and the illegal and the preference of Governments to use administrative or civil penalties as tools to deal with corporate environmental offending

Conclusions of the EFFACE Case studies

This report provides a summary of the conclusions of twelve case studies undertaken within the EFFACE project. The conclusions are structured around major themes of the analytical framework of the project

A paradigm shift in environmental criminal law

This chapter provides an overview of how environmentally harmful behaviour has become the subject of an intense debate about the pros and cons of criminalizing such behaviour. In general, criminalization of environmental harm generally is a relatively recent phenomenon not only at the eu level, but also in domestic law. Originally, the legal protection of the environment usually took place via administrative law, whereby criminal provisions were added at the end of specific legislation of an administrative nature. The goal of the criminalization in those cases was merely to back up administrative obligations (e.g. To obtain a permit). In the 1980s, an increasing awareness emerged especially in legal doctrine that this was not an appropriate way to protect the environment since environmental criminal law was in fact dependent upon administrative law and no direct or independent protection was accorded to the environment. In some national member states (germany, the netherlands, spain and france) autonomous environmental crimes were created which were, moreover, in some cases incorporated into national penal codes in order to express the importance of environmental crime. This tendency could also be found in a convention of the council of europe of 1990 on the protection of the environment through criminal law which, however, never entered into force. Through this convention serious infringements against the environment were directly criminalized. Moreover, an initiative was taken at the eu level to harmonize environmental criminal law. Originally, the justification for this harmonization was (like in the case of the council of europe) to provide a minimum level of environmental criminal law. However, at the eu level, a different justification for criminalization emerged: criminalization was rather seen as an important tool in the fight against the implementation deficit within member states. With that goal, the eu tried to force member states towards criminalization of national legislation implementing european environmental law. However, a problem arose since it was debated whether directives could impose such a duty towards criminalization. In a milestone decision of 13 september 2005, the (then) european court of justice decided that this is possible, although in a subsequent decision the ecj equally decided that directives could not impose a specific type or size of penalties. As a result of the opening provided by the decision of 13 september 2005, council directive 2008/99 on environmental criminal law was promulgated, forcing member states to impose effective, dissuasive and proportional criminal penalties on the violation of national legislation implementing the european environmental acquis. Moreover, since the entry into force of the treaty on the functioning of the european union (tfeu), also referred to as the lisbon treaty, the european institutions can even force member states to criminalize with a particular size and level of penalties