Overview
The term “green criminology” emerged in the 1990s to describe a critical and sustained approach to the study of environmental crime (Lynch 1990; South 1998). This chapter provides an outline of the distinctive features of green criminology, its main concepts and foci of analysis, and the continuing debates that mark its further and continuing development as a bona fide perspective within criminology.
Generally speaking, green criminology takes as its focus issues relating to the environment (in the widest sense possible) and harm (as defined in ecological as well as strictly legal terms). Much of this work has been directed at exposing different instances of substantive social and ecological injustice. It has also involved critique of the actions of nation-states and transnational capital for fostering particular types of harm and for failing to adequately address or regulate harmful activity. Given the pressing nature of many environmental issues, it is not surprising that...
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White, R. (2014). Green Criminology. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_314
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