Theories of green crime

• Traditional criminology

  • Anthropocentric view, humans have a right to dominate nature and can put economic growth before the environment
  • Investigates patters and causes of law breaking
  • Criticized for accepting official definitions of environmental problems which are shaped by elites to serve their own interests
• Traditional - Situ and Emmons

  Define environmental crime as 'an authorized act or omission that violates the law'
• Green criminology

  • Eco-centric view that sees humans and environment as interdependent, so environment can harm humans too
  • Focuses on notion of harm rather than criminal law
  • Legal definitions can't provide consistent global standard of environmental harm, laws differ from state to state
• Transgressive criminology

  Oversteps (transgresses) boundaries of traditional criminology to include new issues
• Zemiology

  Study of harms
• Green - White


  Proper subject of criminology is any action that harms the physical environment and/or the human and non-human animals within it, even if no law has been broken
• Marxists and green criminologists

  • Capitalist class are able to shape the law and define crime so that their own exploitative activities are not criminalised, to ensure that enforcement is weak
  • Argue that powerful interests are able to define their own interests what counts as unacceptable environmental harm