Green Crime

Question 1

White - green crime definition

Answer 1

Green Crime or Environmental Crime has been defined by Rob White as “any action that harms the physical environment and any creatures that live within it, even if no law has technically been broken’.

Question 2

White - two main views of green crime

Answer 2

White states that there are two main views of Green crime:

Ecocentric: Damage to the environment is damage to the other species as well putting the human race at risk in the future.

Anthropocentric: Humans have the right to exploit the environment and other species for their own benefit.

Question 3

South - classification of green crime

Answer 3

Nigel South et al (2008) classification of green crimes into two distinct types, primary and secondary:

Primary – Harm inflicted on the environment.

Secondary - Crime that grows out of the flouting of rules.

Question 4

Carrabine et al. -

Answer 4

Secondary green crime: “symbiotic green crime is crime that grows out of the flouting of rules that seek to regulate environmental disasters” (Carrabine et al. 2004).

Question 5

Wolf - likely victims of environmental crime

Answer 5

Wolf states that it is those in the developing world, the poor and ethnic minorities that are most likely to face the effects of environmental crime. This is due to their inability to move away from areas where these crimes take place. For example, the people of Bhopal in India who were the victims of the Union Carbide gas leak in December 1984. Over 2,000 died immediately due to the leak but it is estimated that over 8,000 have died since of Gas related illnesses, as many of the local people were unable to move away from Bhopal after the incident.

Question 6

Wolf - corporations responsibility

Answer 6

Wolf also states that corporations and businesses may be responsible for the majority of the air, water and land pollution due to illegal dumping and health and safety breaches, but they are not the only perpetrators of environmental crime. As individuals, we also need to take responsibility for the cumulative effect we have on the environment by littering and fly tipping.

Question 7

Sanata - military’s green crimes

Answer 7

Santana (2002) points out that the military are the biggest institutional polluters due to the amount of unexploded ordinance and shrapnel that is left behind in war zones. These can have lasting effects due to the toxicity of these items. He uses the example that farmers in Northern France and Belgium are still finding ordinance and shrapnel left over from World War I and some fields are still unusable for agriculture.