Green crime

Question 1

What is green crime?

Answer 1

A type of global crime as it damages the environment that can spread across borders. The planet can be seen as a simple ecosystem in which species are interconnected and interdependent, so damage to the ecosystem in one area can have global impacts. The damage can be defined as pollution, deforestation and habitat destruction and wildlife crime

Question 2

What does South (2008) argue about green crime?

Answer 2

The definitions of environmental harm should be extended to behaviour which is not actually illegal but which has the potential to have negative global effects. There are two types: primary acts that directly destroy the planet leading to secondary acts including criminal organisations to assisit in dumpting toxic waste, bribing officials to turn a blind eye to breaking of environmental regulations and violence against oppositional environmental groups

Question 3

What does White (2008) argue?

Answer 3

The definitions of green crime should relate to the notion of harm to nature rather than just humans or animal species. He advocates that green sociology needs to be underpinned by zemiology (looking at the social and environemntal harms committed by corporations and nation states)

Question 4

How are international laws anthropocentric?

Answer 4

They protect humans as they assume that humanity has the right to exploit the enironment as a result of the corporate colonialisation of nature

Question 5

What does Beck (1992) argue about green crime?

Answer 5

Many of the threats to the environment and, in the long term, life on earth, are the product of what he calls manufactured risks. He argues that in pre - modern societies, many of the risks to human life were the products of forces outside people’s control. For example, poor people had no control over their poverty ad the resulting diseases that killed thir children. People were also constantly as risk from natural phenomena such as earthquakes and floods

Question 6

What is the biggest green crime?

Answer 6

• Pollution has the biggest environmental threat to health in the UK
• It causes 28,000 to 36,000 deaths a year as aresult of long - term exposure

Question 7

Why is green crime difficult to police and punish?

Answer 7

• current environemntal laws ar inconsistent because they often differ across countries
• many of the environemntal laws that do exisit are influenced by powerful transnational oil, mineral and chemical companies and constructedin ways that do not threaten their operations or profits