Green Criminology: Theories, Concepts
and Connected Meanderings
Nigel South
ESRC Green Criminology Seminar
Northumbria University
October 2012
some remarks on influences and
biography and understanding of the
development of some theories and
concepts in green criminology
A „perspective‟ not a „theory‟

1998 essay: „the case for the enhancement of
environmental consciousness in criminology and
the development of a green perspective.‟
Aims were „both modest and ambitious.
Modest ... no claim to put forward a 'theory' for or
of, 'a green criminology'‟ but emphasise the
„importance of „thinking green‟ as a sensitising
perspective‟
and „ambitious‟ in the sense that I argued that
„such a perspective should now find a prominent
place on the criminological agenda.‟
An inter-disciplinary perspective
„green issues open up a wide range of
possibilities for inter-disciplinary work,
both within the social sciences and with
the natural sciences,
seeing criminologists collaborating with
economists, geographers, biologists,
health specialists, human rights workers,
lawyers and others‟
four key questions arising from my title:
first, 'why a Green criminology?‟;
second, 'what kinds of existing work might this build upon?‟;
third, 'what theoretical issues are opened up?‟;
and finally, 'what directions might a green criminology pursue?'‟
perhaps these 4 questions merit some brief revisiting.
possible influences on those of a certain age
simultaneously thinking about green issues, animal rights,
environmental protest movements, ecofeminism and so on:
New deviancy theories > sensitivity to the plight of the
powerless and marginalised
Marxist crim > highlighting of the crimes of the powerful and
that frameworks of law represent entrenched biases and
interests largely hinging on protection of property rights
– can see how this leads to questioning of „whose
property?‟,‟how and why did it come to belong to someone else
so they could do such destructive things with and to it?‟
Feminist criminology impact > crimes of men, victimization of
women, marginalisation of women as actors (as criminals,
victims, protestors)
- Men responsible for violation of women, civilized life, and
environment and other species.
Peacemaking criminology > respect and conflict mediation and
reconciliation
– easy to see how translates into an idea that we should be
treating the planet differently and less aggressively
publication chronology:
essay and the journal special issue
Theoretical Criminology, 1998, 2,2, Beirne and South, eds.
preceded by some years by Lynch‟s 1990 piece on „The
Greening of Criminology: A Perspective on the 1990s‟ in an
issue of The Critical Criminologist.
However, as Lynch acknowledges, while a far-sighted piece no
one saw it / popularised it ...
The point is not so much that Lynch was „first‟
-though that does deserve acknowledgement –
but that between around 1990 and the end of that
decade, the time was obviously right for the
emergence of a green criminology
various scholars around the world started to write and
communicate about similar issues and concerns.
Criminology and the zeitgeist
Personal engagement: early thoughts about a „green criminology‟ were developed
for a 1996 undergraduate lecture series;
interest in pollution followed from interest in public health
but used the phrase a „green criminology‟ to complement lectures on other „new
horizons‟ in criminology such as „feminist criminology‟, „post-modern criminology‟,
„comparative criminology‟, „historical criminology‟ ...
nb see „Horizons‟ section in Ruggiero (et al) 1998, The New European Criminology
independently, same issues and questions identified for a green criminology in an
age of environmental change. - Australia, US, Canada, Europe
Beirne and South (eds) 2007; White 2008; Sollund (ed) 2008; Eman, et al, 2009;
Walters, 2010, plus ...
some Definitions and Distinctions
(i) Field of Study;
(ii) Legal and non-legal classification
of Status of Actions;
(iii) Conceptualising and Typologising
Harms and Crimes
(i) Field of Study;
Green criminology:
•not intended to be a unitary enterprise - diversity is one of its great
strengths
•an evolving perspective (see, e.g., South 1998: 212-213; see also White
2008:14)
• a loose framework or set of intellectual, empirical and political orientations
toward problems (harms, offences and crimes related to the environment,
different species and the planet).
•an ‘open’ perspective and framework, arising from within the tradition(s) of
critical criminology but actively seeks inter- and multi-disciplinary
engagement.
•both a network of interested individuals and a forum for sharing and
debating ideas.
Terminology
White (2008) :‘environmental criminology’ - reclaim from what is more properly
considered ‘place-based criminology’
White (2010:6) also offered the term, ‘eco-global criminology’, to ‘refer[] to a
criminological approach that is informed by ecological considerations and by a
critical analysis that is worldwide in its scale and perspective . . .’.
Walters (2010) the term ‘eco-crime’ is capable of encapsulating ‘existing legal
definitions of environmental crime, as well as sociological analyses of those
environmental harms not necessarily specified by law’.
Other formulations include ‘conservation criminology’ (Gibbs et al. 2010) which is
concerned with evidence-based practice addressing environmental crimes and risks,
PS
(Interestingly, Bottoms in latest (fifth) edition of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology,
titles his chapter „Developing Socio-spatial criminology‟ with one reason for the
name change being given by the author as the possible confusion that might arise if
„environmental crime‟ were used as a description „because it is sometimes used to
refer to the important emerging field of „green‟ criminology‟ (Bottoms, 2012: 451).)
At present criminologists most frequently
employ the term ‘green criminology’ to
describe the study of ecological,
environmental or green crime or harm,
and related matters of speciesism and of
environmental (in)justice...
So far –
very western / transatlantic / global north dominated literature
communicating in English with little translated work which
makes it seem likely that there are other research literatures in
other languages and in areas not seen as criminology, law or
social science but that would be highly relevant.
For example, pioneering work from Slovenia by Pečar (1981)
put forward early warnings about new ecologically damaging
forms of criminality
Whatever the descriptor - agreement on several major themes, topics and
problems.
pollution and its regulation;
corporate criminality and its impact on the environment;
health and safety in the workplace where breaches have environmentally
damaging consequences;
involvement of syndicated crime and official corruption in the illegal disposal
of toxic waste;
the impact and legacy of law enforcement and military operations on
landscapes, water supply, air quality and living organisms populating these
areas—human, animal and plant;
as well as forms of law enforcement and rule regulation relevant to such
acts
(ii) The legal or non legal status of actions.
• Shover and Routhe (2005: 324) argue that „criminal
conviction of environmental “crime” requires prosecutors to
demonstrate either that defendants knowingly, intentionally, or
recklessly violated the law or were negligent.‟
• S & R also suggest we could consider a category of
environmental „illegalities‟ which „by contrast, are violations of
rules that do not require demonstration of intent to violate‟
•overlap with the category of „harms‟ - not actually breaking
laws but morally and ethically argued to be anti-social,
damaging or even lethal in consequences
(iii) Typologies of Harms and Crimes
One suggested typology derives from a distinction between primary and
secondary green crimes (Carrabine et al, 2004).
a simple but suggestive way of differentiating clusters of harms and crimes
by classifying some as:
resulting directly from the destruction and degradation of the earth’s
resources,
and others as:
those crimes or harms that are symbiotic with or dependent upon such
destruction and efforts made to regulate or prevent it.
Carrabine et al 2004, 2013.
1. Crimes / Harms of air pollution
2. Crimes / Harms of deforestation
3. Crimes / Harms against animals
4. Crimes / Harms of water pollution
White (2008:98-99)
a threefold typology of „brown‟, „green‟ and „white‟ issues:
‟brown‟ issues tend to be defined in terms of urban life and pollution e.g air pollution,
disposal of toxic/hazardous waste, oil spills,
„green‟ issues refer to conservation matters and „wilderness‟ areas e.g., acid rain,
biodiversity loss, habitat destruction
„white‟ issues refer to the impact of new technologies and various laboratory
practices e.g., animal testing and experimentation; cloning of human tissue.
Lynch and Stretsky (2007: 251)
four problems with which a green criminology should be concerned:
critical examination of environmental policies and offering meaningful
alternatives where appropriate;
environmental justice and the „unequal distribution of environmental
hazards across diverse races and classes‟ (p.256);
the „health impacts of exposure to environmental toxins‟;
and the links between toxic exposure and criminal behaviour, for
example, associated between lead, cadmium and mercury and behavioural
changes that produce increases in aggression and violence (p.261).
Criminology is particularly prone to
amnesia about its own intellectual
history (Young, 1979: 11), a condition
then corrected as old theories and
insights are „remembered‟, revived,
re-interpreted and applied anew.
Agnew is currently applying classic criminological
theories to his analysis of the environmental harms
caused by the everyday behaviours we all engage in
Lynch (2013) has recently written of the „eco-city‟ –
essentially an approach to small scale community
living organised according to green principles shaping
energy, transport and economic systems. ... With
respect to crime, an eco-city approach can be easily
integrated with the premises of social disorganization
theory
green approach to urban - or any local environmental design can also be a way of rethinking
and re-orientating „crime prevention through
environmental design‟ methods
(though the early versions of this often did include
planting – albeit sometimes for the prickly deterrent
qualities of some bushes rather than the aesthetic,
civilising and calming effect now emphasised by some
researchers – see e.g Pretty et al, 2013)
Postmodernism
Peacemaking
Victimology
Feminism
Personal:
Green crimes and public health impacts
Victims and victimisation
Domestic:
Home / Local / National
„everyday actions and behaviours‟
Consumption and waste
Transnational:
Global crime(s) / Harm(s) against humanity and the planet
Legal framework
„Ecocide‟
Intergenerational:
The future; horizon scanning;
Personal:
Public health – This is an impact on the person
Lynch and Stretesky (2001) expose the hazards and
health consequences for human populations associated
with the presence of toxic waste, pesticides and dioxin in
our environments, both global and local.
Williams (1996) has written of the need for an
„environmental victimology‟
Domestic:
Home / Local / National
„everyday actions and behaviours‟; Consumption and
waste ;
Everyday ecocide
Unless, arising in the course of war and conflict, much of
this activity is a product of the economic forces that
require and enable production and consumption
Un/Natural harms, disasters, climate change and chains of events
Transnational
„We're now moving into a new geological epoch, one
scientists are calling the Anthropocene – a world
remade by man, most obvious in his emissions of
carbon dioxide‟ McKibben (2011)
disasters are themselves a part of chains of events,
from the establishment of the conditions that caused
the event or ensured its consequences would be the
more devastating through to the sequelae.
long-standing criminological concern with the question of how to provide
„protection‟
Can international and/or national laws offer the space for the
protection of the environment?
Can rights be constructed and upheld as applying to nonhuman subjects / objects? At what point does such a „right‟
become „meaningful?
Proposals to enhance rights and justice will rest on a notion of
a sustainable future for the planet, humanity and the wider
environment, ensure these rights are longstanding and
consider the matter of intergenerational justice.
Rights, ethics and Earth jurisprudence: applying the concept of
ecocide
Over the past few decades a number of commentators have, as Cullinan
(2011:144) puts it:
„drawn attention to the need for legal systems to take an evolutionary leap
forward by recognizing legally enforceable rights for nature and other-thanhuman-beings.” >>> “the evolution of earth jurisprudence”
Stone (1972) has questioned whether the widening of protection and rights
to the formerly disempowered should be extended to natural objects such
as trees
Berry (1999:161) argued that: “we need a jurisprudence that would provide
for the legal rights of geological and biological as well as human
components of the Earth community. A legal system exclusively for humans
is not realistic.”
attribution of rights to animals and various other forms of nonhuman life is highly contested
Even the principles of conservation give rise to controversy:
„Should we kill for the sake of conservation? Can conservation
biologists do good science, saving species and ecosystems
while also being compassionate?
(Bekoff, 2010: 24).
Genocide and ecocide:
Rosa Del Olmo argued that historically drug crop
eradication programs should be seen as a form of
state crime and she described this as :
„a transnational crime of broad scope which we can
call eco-bio-genocide.‟
Polly Higgins (2010, 2012) has
campaigned for the introduction of
Ecocide as a 5th international Crime
against Peace under a proposed
amendment to the Rome Statute
treaty
Higgins proposed the following as an
amendment to the Rome Statute:
Ecocide is the extensive damage to,
destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a
given territory, whether by human agency or by
other causes, to such an extent that peaceful
enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory
has been severely diminished.
original definition of genocide crucially
identified the destruction of a people by other
factors not directly involved in killing.
Ecocide can and often does lead to cultural
damage and destruction.
Like genocide, ecocide can be direct and
indirect; it can be the destruction of a territory
and it can also be the undermining of a way of
life - ecological as well as cultural.
links nicely to my fourth dimension in
time and space the intergenerational.
the “common heritage” of Earth‟s natural resources,
fresh water systems, oceans, atmosphere, and outer
space belongs to all generations in an inter-temporal
partnership.‟ (Weston 2012)
We may now be approaching what
some scientists have referred to as
our „planetary boundaries‟ –
the extent to which we are already
over or nearing our planet‟s ability to
cope once nine boundaries are
breached by damage
There is much to change and much to
challenge if we are to respond to this
looming crisis.
In its own ways, a green criminology
can make its contribution.