Green Crime

Question 1

What is green or environmental crime? Use a theorist

Answer 1

Wolf (2011) point out that the term green crime (also environmental crime and echo-crime) was first used in traditional criminology to describe actions that break laws protecting the environment.

The problem with this approach is that the same harmful environmental action may be defined as illegal in some countries but not in others.

Laws also change over time, and a wide range of actions that harm the environment may be regarded as breaches of health and safety regulations rather than as criminal offences - and even such regulations vary over time and between countries.

Question 2

Distinguish between primary and secondary crime. Theorist?

Answer 2

Green criminologist, Nigel South (2008) talks about primary and secondary green crime:
Primary
Crimes that are committed directly against the environment or acts that cause harm to the environment, e.g:
Pollution
Animal cruelty
Deforestation

Secondary
Further crime that grows out of flouting rules relating to the environment, e.g:
Violence against environmental groups (e.g. the French attack on the Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior)
Bribery / organised crime to avoid environmental regulations

Question 3

What is anthropocentric harm?

Answer 3

Considers harm to the environment from the perspective of humanity. Pollution is a problem because it damages human water supply or causes diseases that are expensive to overcome; climate change is a problem because of its impact on people and the economic cost of dealing with it.

Question 4

What is ecocentric harm?

Answer 4

Does not distinguish between humans and the rest of the ecosystem; sees harm to any aspect of the environment as harm to all of it. Therefore, crimes like animal cruelty or the destruction of habitats are green crimes, regardless of whether or not there is any specific human cost.

Question 5

Explain the transgressive approach to green crime, theorist?

Answer 5

Lynch and Stretesky (2003) suggest environmental or green criminology should adopt a more transgressive or wider approach which goes beyond defining environmental crime simply as law-breaking.

White (2008) adopts such an approach, and considers environmental crime to be any human action that causes environmental harm, whether or not it is illegal. He regards as crimes all actions that harm the physical environment, including all people, animals and plants that live within it.

Sometimes referred to as an environmental justice approach

Question 6

List the key theoorist for this topic?

Answer 6

Wolf
Lynch and Stretchy 
White
Beck 
Potter (not priority)
Snider 
Sutherland

Question 7

Examples of green crime that do not break the law.

Answer 7

Involve various violations of national and international laws and regulations, or they may not be against the law at all

Include the pollution and contamination of land, water supplies and air through discharge and emission of dangerous or toxic substances from manufacturing processes, farming and transport; pollution though the burning of fossil fuels; and species declined by the destruction of natural habitats

Question 8

Examples of green crime that do break the law.

Answer 8

Some are caused either by deliberate breaking or avoidance of rules that seek to regulate and prevent environmental damage or disasters, or through negligence.
Include the deliberate or negligent release of controlled toxic emissions; the illegal disposal and dumping of toxic/hazardous waste; the illegal trafficking of endangered animals and plants; unregulated fishing; and deforestation

Question 9

Case study: The 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India

An example of an environmental crime that illustrates both the traditional criminological and environmental justice approaches.

Answer 9

The Union Carbide chemical company plant leaked poisonous gas, which affected half a million people; by 2012, there has been approximately 25,000 feathers, with at least 120,000 people still suffering severe symptoms - like blindness and birth defects in children - from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site

The traditional criminological approach suggests the disaster arose because Union Carbide broke local health and safety laws, while the more transgressive environmental justice approach suggesting Union carbide deliberately located plants in countries where health and safety laws were weak and there was less concern for the environment.