Environmental Crimes

1. Environmental or green crimes: damage to the environment caused either deliberately or through negligence. Pollution of land, water supplies and air through the discharge, emission and dumping of dangerous or toxic substances.

Green Crime:

What is green crime? - 2 definitions:

2. Traditional criminology focuses on Green Crime which has by definition broken environmental law. They are interested in regulations concerning the environment. 📝For example, sociologists such as Situ and Emmons (2000) define environmental crime as "an unauthorised act or omission that violates the law". It investigates the patterns and causes of law-breaking

Advantage: it has a clearly defined subject matter

Disadvantages: They simply accept the definitions of environmental problems and crimes, which are typically shaped by powerful groups

Also – the same harmful environmental action may be defined as illegal in some countries but not in others

3. Green criminology takes a more radical approach to overcome this problem legal/illegal -White (2008) argues green crime is any action that harms the environment and/or the (non) human animals within it regardless of whether a law has been broken or not. Green criminology is a form of transgressive criminology – it includes new issues and oversteps the boundaries of traditional criminology to include new issues – this approach is known as 'zemiology' – the study of harms -Different countries have different laws so what is a crime in one country may not be a crime in another. Therefore, legal definitions can't provide a consistent standard of harm = less chance of prosecution. -By moving away from legal definitions - green criminologists can develop a 'global perspective'. -Green criminologists take a similar view to Marxists. They believe powerful interests are able to define in their own interests what is unacceptable environmental harm. A03 - Evaluation of Green Criminology:

Strength: Recognises the growing environmental concerns and the need to address the harms and risks of the environment

Weaknesses: One problem with all forms of transgressive criminology is the difficulty of categorisation. By focusing simply on "harm" the activity that could come under criminologists' investigations is almost infinite.

• Furthermore, the question of whether harm has been caused becomes one of political and more judgment rather than empirical and value-free research.
• For example, while all green criminologists might decide to include animal cruelty within their definitions of crime, some would include all meat production or even the consumption of meat, while others would consider that entirely normal and acceptable behaviour. Two views of harm - White (2008)

Anthropocentric (Human-centred view) - this assumes humans have the right to dominate nature for their own ends and our economic growth before the environment

• This view is usually adopted by national states and transnational corporations. Eco-centric:

• This view sees humans and their environment as interdependent so environmental harm hurts humans too.

• This view sees both humans and the environment as liable to exploitation, particularly by global capitalism

• This view is usually adopted by green criminologists to judge environmental harm

Primary and Secondary Green Crimes - South (2014)

4. Primary green crime: direct harm to the environment
5. Secondary green crime: crime that grows out of the flouting of rules aimed at preventing or regulating environmental disasters.

📝E.g. killing an elephant for ivory would be a primary green crime. The organised criminal network involved in the illegal ivory trade involves lots of secondary green crime.

📝Examples of primary green crime:

• Crimes of Air Pollution: Burning fossil fuels from industry and transport adds 3 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere every year
• Crimes of Deforestation: Between 1960 and 1990, one-fifth of the world's tropical rainforests was destroyed, for example through illegal logging
• Crimes of Species Decline and Animal Rights: 50 species a day are becoming extinct, and 46% of mammals and 11% of bird species are at risk.
• Crimes of Water Pollution: Half a billion people lack access to drinking water and 25 million die annually from drinking contaminated water. 📝Examples of secondary green crime:

State violence against oppositional groups:

• 1985 French secret service blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, New Zealand.

• The ship was trying to prevent the French testing of nuclear weapons Hazardous waste and organised crime:

• High cost of safe and legal disposal, businesses may seek to dispose of such wastes illegally -2004 tsunami – hundreds of barrels of radioactive waste were illegally dumped by European companies on the shores of Somalia Bhopal Disaster 1984:

• Union Carbide chemical company leaked poisonous gas

• Affected 500,000 people

• By 2012 – around 25,000 deaths

• At least 120,000 people still suffering severe symptoms e.g. blindness and birth defects in children Traditional criminological approach: the disaster arose because Union Carbide broke local health and safety laws

Transgressive criminological approach: Union Carbide deliberately located plants in countries where health and safety laws were weak and there was less concern for the environment

Volkswagen Emissions Scandal 2015:

• 11 million vehicles were illegally fitted with a defeat device aimed at cheating emission tests
• Breached environmental regulations
• The company was possibly responsible for nearly 1m tonnes of extra air pollution every year

Green crime, globalisation and global risk society:

• Beck argues that many environmental disasters in the past, such as droughts, famine and flooding were a result of natural origin and largely outside human control

• In late modern societies, he suggests there are new kinds of risk that are created by the actions of humans through the application of science and technology.

• Beck refers to potentially disastrous consequences for the global environment

• Events in one country might have consequences in many, e.g. deforestation of the Amazon rainforests creating major climate changes

• The use of nuclear energy creates a growing problem of nuclear waste disposal as well as increasing risks of nuclear accidents.

• White = globalised character of environmental harms by the way transnational corporations move manufacturing operations to the Global South to avoid pollution laws. Global risk society - Beck

• Some sociologists argue that globalisation is also an important factor in green crime.

• While some environmental crimes are local in character, many cross national borders such as pollution.

• This link with Beck (late modernist) works on a global risk society - where he points to issues like global warming and the way they pose a risk to the whole world.

• He argues that many of these risks are manufactured risks that have been created by the way we organise contemporary society.

• He argues that in today's late modern society, there are new kinds of risks created by the actions of humans through science and technology.

• As a result, he increased productivity and technology that sustains these resources have created manufactured risks which could involve harm to the environment and consequences for humanity.

The complexity of green crime:

Wolf (2011) identifies 4 groups who commit green crimes:

7. Individuals: cumulative impact - littering, illegal disposal of household waste, dealing with endangered animals.
8. Private business organisations: cause the most devastating environmental harm. Green crime is a typical example of corporate crime - large corporations pollute the land, air, and water through emissions of toxic minerals, dumping of waste, and breaching health and safety regulations.
9. States and governments: in collusion with private businesses. Military - largest institutional polluter, arms race in the 20th century
10. Organised crime: low risk/high profits, often in collusion with governments, mafias in Italy colluded with legal businesses with regard to hazardous waste disposal.

The Victims of Green Crimes:

• Victims are more likely to be of working-class background or from a minority ethnic group - in both developed and undeveloped countries.

• Potter = there is an 'environmental racism': those suffering the worst effects of environmental damage are of different ethnicity from those causing the damage.

• People living in the developing world (which were legal and illegal dumping sites) face greater risks of exposure to pollution than those in the developed world

• In the developed world - it is the working class that face the greater risks of pollution + consequences of industrial accidents. Enforcement against green crimes:

• Governments create and enforce laws and regulations that control green crime - but they often form policies in collaboration with the businesses that are principal offenders. A02 - Synoptic link: to Snider (Mx) = states are reluctant to pass laws + regulations against pollution ect as they may lose funding/support.

• Maybe pressured to pass them due to opposition groups e.g. Greenpeace Often, green crime does not carry the same stigma as street crime:

• TNC's have the power to de-label the crimes

• Can get away with it or pay fines - link to cicourel and typifications

• Higher fine in 2011-12 = £170,000, just 16 prison sentences given out (longest was 27 months)

• Corporations will take the risk (rational choice theory)

• Poorer countries don't have the resources, political will or power to enforce restrictions - makes it an easy place to commit green crimes. Marxists - blame capitalism:

According to Marxists, the single biggest cause of green crimes is industrial capitalism

• The primary aim of most governments is achieving economic growth, and the means whereby we achieve this is through producing and consuming stuff

• As it stands, companies are all too often given the green light by governments to extract and pollute.

• An important part of a Marxist analysis of green crime is to explore who the victims of green crime are, and the victims of pollution tend to be the poorest in society. E.g. Bhopal tragedy (eco-racism?!)

• 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

• It needs to be cut out (capitalism is like cancer)

• Capitalism is dependent on infinite growth within the planet

• Losing key resources/species/aspects of the environment due to capitalism and economic growth

• Global economy growing at 3% a year (doubles every 24 years)

• Links to an anthropocentric view

• Corporations using third world countries for illegal dumping – space going to run out in future

• Money = resources = natural right to do what they want = Rich are to blame

• He advocates communist ideals Green crime and Fracking:

• Fracking = refers to the process of extracting shale gas from solid rock deep underground using hydraulic fracturing the rock.

• Green criminologists believe that fracking creates environmental risks - earthquakes, air pollution, groundwater contamination

• Traditional criminologists argue it's good, creates jobs and reduces the import of liquid natural gas, and reduces the burning of coal.

• Tracking can be seen as a state corporate crime - Lampkin (2016) = trade-off between possible public + environmental health risks + potential for economic development + expansion of the other. Marxists would support this view. Now fracking is illegal in the UK. Lampkin can be criticised as it creates loads of jobs and helps the economy.

Problems with researching green crimes:

Sociologists face a number of difficulties in researching green crime:

• Different laws: countries have different laws about green crime, which means that official statistics may not always be comparable between different countries.
• Different definitions: there is some dispute over what counts as a green crime and this will vary between different researchers and nations.
• Wolf = This generates problems in the measurement, monitoring and reporting of green crime and there are a few reliable and standardised sources of data.
• Difficulties in measurement: green crime is often carried out by individual organised crime syndicates, powerful states and multinational corporations who will have the capacity to conceal their crimes and the most powerful can often avoid persecution (negotiation of justice) even if their crimes are discovered.