Patterns and trends in green crime

Question 1

What is green crime?

Answer 1

Criminal activity that affects the environment (/against natural resources)

Question 2

Examples of green crime?

Answer 2

• Dumping of toxic waste
• Fly-tipping
• Poaching/trafficking of endangered species

Question 3

What are the 3 examples of environmental crime?

Answer 3

1) Deforestation and habitat destruction
2) Pollution (air, water, land)
3) Wildlife crime (poaching)

Question 4

What do Carrabine and South say about green crime?

Answer 4

• Primary green crime: activities that diretly destroy/seriously degrade the planet’s ecosystems or local environments
• Secondary green crime behaviour committed in response to primary green crime
  (Including: using criminal organisations to assist in dumping toxis waste or bribing officials to turn a blind eye to the breaking of environmental regulations)

Question 5

What does White say about green crime?

Answer 5

• Definitions of green crime should relate to the notion of ‘harm to nature’, rather tham just to human/animal species
• Needs to be underpinned by zemiology (study of social harms)
• Critical of current international laws aimed at protecting environment, as they are ‘anthropocentric’ (assume humanity has the right to exploit the environment)

Question 6

What are manufactured risks of green crime?

Answer 6

• Beck- Many of the threats to the environment/life on Earth are the product of ‘manufactured risks’
• In pre-modern society, many of the risks were beyond human control, e.g: poverty, disease, natural phenomena (earthquakes, floods)
• Recent demands for consumer goods and economic growth have manufactured new global risks to which we are all equally vulnerable, such as: global warming, climate change, cancer, global pandemics, obesity, exposure to nuclear chemicals, radiation, gases

Question 7

What does Potter say about green crime?

Answer 7

• Damage done by harmful environmental activities far exceeds damage done by street crime
• Poorest people suffer more from environmental crime- millions of unavoidale deaths caused by preventable environmental problems, e.g: lack of safe drinking water

Question 8

What does Franko Aas say about green crime?

Answer 8

• Green crime demonstrates the interception of local and governmental crime
• E.g: the Chernobyl nuclear disaster resulted in banning of sheep farming in some parts of England and Wales

Question 9

Why is green crime difficult to police and punish?

Answer 9

• There are few local/international laws governing the state the environment- current laws are inconsistent as they differ between countries
• Many of the environmental laws that do exist are influenced by powerful transnational oil, mineral and chemical companies, and are constructed in ways that do not threaten their operations/profits
• Politicians are generally reluctant to legislate against transnational corporations as companies are economically powerful

Question 10

What does Wolf say about the victims of green crime?

Answer 10

• There are inequalities in how laws are made, applied and enforced
• Working classes, the poor, and ethnic minority groups will always be the most likely victims

Question 11

What does White say about victims of green crime?

Answer 11

• People in the developing world face greater risk of exposure to environmental air, water, and land pollution (developing world provides legal/illegeal dump sites for unwanted waste)