Crime, Deviance and Society An Introduction to Sociological Criminology

This chapter focuses on green criminology, which continues to emerge and evolve as a dynamic multidisciplinary approach to addresses behaviours and actions that compromise and threaten the integrity of the planet. Walters et al. (2013: 4) summarise green criminology as ‘a collection of new and innovative voices within the criminological lexicon, and its engagement with diverse narratives seeks to identify, theorise and respond to environmental issues of both global and local concern. The expansion of green criminological perspectives serves to harness and mobilise academic, activist and governmental interests to preserve, protect and develop environmental issues’. Green criminology's agenda inevitably involves an examination of the intersection of the concepts of harm, power and justice; and also of the ways in which power is mobilised to justify a market model of capitalism with unjust and harmful consequences for the environment and the world’s most vulnerable peoples. It is thus that green criminologies extend critical rethinking of the parameters and horizons of the criminological landscape.