GREEN CRIME

Question 1

Green crime

Answer 1

• Crime against the environment.
• Green crime is considered to be a global crime as the planet is a single eco-system
• It is very often carried out by powerful interests, particularly transnational corporations (driven by capitalism).
• Green crime can be seen in one locality but its effects are likely to be worldwide.
• For example, Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986) spread radioactive material over thousands of miles.

Question 2

Beck, 1992

Answer 2

• Describes late modern society as a ‘global risk society’; the massive increase in productivity and technology that create and sustain our resources have created new manufactured ‘risks’ - dangers that we have never faced before.
• Many of these risks involve harm to the environment and, in turn, to humanity due to its effects like global warming and the adverse consequences of climate change.
• The events in Mozambique (2010) are a clear example of how the global nature of human-made risk can produce crime and disorder.
• The hottest heat wave in a century caused wild fires that destroyed parts of the country’s grain belt.
• This shortage led Russia to introduce export bans and the rise in the world price of grain.
• This resulted in a 30% rise in the price of bread in Mozambique, a country heavily dependent on food imports, leading to rioting and looting.
• Possibly also the result of global warming, Mozambique’s own harvest had been hit by drought.
• At the same time, international spectators engaged in what the World Development Movement called ‘gambling on hunger in financial markets (Patel, 2010)

Question 3

Situ and Emmons (2000)

Answer 3

Define environmental crime as “an unauthorised act or omission that violates law”

Question 4

White, 2008

Answer 4

• As many of the worst environmental harms are not illegal and so the subject matter of green criminology is much wider than that of traditional criminology, White instead identifies green crime as a form of transgressive criminology. It transgresses the boundaries of traditional criminology to include these issues.
• The approach is also known as ‘zemiology’, the study of harms.
• For White, “any action that harms the physical environment and any creatures that live within it, even if no law has technically been broken” should be considered green crime.

Question 5

Green crime is difficult to police because of

Answer 5

• Cultural variances in law: these can also alter the definition of green crime as they are the product of individual nation-states and their political progress. By moving away from a legal definition, green criminology develops a global perspective on environmental harm.
• Very few local or international laws govern the state of the environment
• International laws are difficult to construct
• Laws that exist are shaped by powerful capitalist interests

Question 6

Nigel South, 2014

Answer 6

• Identified two types of green crime: primary and secondary.
• Primary crime is the direct result of the destruction and degradation of the planet’s resources e.g. air pollution, deforestation and animal abuse.
• Secondary crime are crimes that are a result of flouting existing laws and rules that are aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters.
• For example, state crimes against environmental groups (Greenpeace, 1985), hazardous waste and environmental discrimination (poorer groups are worse affected by pollution - poor housing complexes close to waste disposal sites.)

Question 7

What is the problem with measuring crime?

Answer 7

Different countries have different laws, so the same harmful action may be a crime on one and not in another - therefore, legal definitions cannot provide a consistent standard of harm.