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Chapter

Cover Environmental Law

5. Criminal Liability  

This chapter introduces criminal liability for non-compliance with English environmental law. Environmental crime can be defined as behaviour that contravenes statutory provisions for the protection of the ecological and physical environment, where there is some kind of punitive sanction imposed for the contravention, with such provisions sometimes also pursuing the protection of public health. Environmental crime can also include criminal offences created through the common law, such as public nuisance. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss overarching themes, such as key elements of strict liability offences, in criminalizing behaviour that damages the environment, rather than details of specific offences spelt out in particular statutes. The argument here is that environmental crime sits uneasily within the environmental law regulatory landscape, which has been shaped in the UK in recent years by co-operative, ‘better regulation’ agendas that seek to reduce burdens on business.

Chapter

Cover The Oxford Textbook on Criminology

12. Green criminology  

Angus Nurse

This chapter studies green criminology, a strand of criminology that looks at crimes against the environment, animals, and non-human nature that are largely ignored by mainstream criminology. Green criminology takes a critical approach, looking beyond narrow, human-centred definitions of crime to consider a wider conception which some see as a form of social harm. Green criminologists examine a wide range of environmental issues, from wildlife crime, wildlife trafficking, animal rights, and species justice to corporate environmental crime and illegal pollution, ecological justice and ecocide, food crime, and the links between organised crime and the waste industry. The chapter looks at how environmental issues are sometimes neglected by markets, the criminological concepts and theoretical approaches associated with green criminology, and the debate about whether we should focus on green crimes or harms. It also considers how environmental harms are regulated and the different ways of responding to and policing green crimes.

Chapter

Cover Environmental Law

8. Environmental crime and enforcement  

Stuart Bell, Donald McGillivray, Ole W. Pedersen, Emma Lees, and Elen Stokes

This chapter is concerned with environmental crime and the enforcement of environmental law. It starts with some consideration of the difficult definition of ‘environmental crime’, including the distinction between moral and legal meanings of the term. Some of the basic framework of environmental crime, which helps to explain several of the approaches to the enforcement of environmental regulation, is then considered. For example, the fact that many environmental crimes are strict liability offences explains why the rate of successful prosecutions is high, but may also provide an explanation as to why some consider the sanctions that are imposed by the courts to be too low. A large part of the chapter is dedicated to a discussion of the enforcement practices adopted by regulatory agencies in England and Wales, including discussion of the use of civil sanctions instead of prosecutions and the recently enacted sentencing guidelines for environmental offences.

Chapter

Cover The Oxford Handbook of Criminology

14. Green criminology  

Avi Brisman and Nigel South

Criminology must maintain relevance in a changing world and engage with new challenges. Perhaps pre-eminent among those facing the planet today are threats to the natural environment and, by extension, to human health and rights and to other species. A green criminology has emerged as a (now well established) criminological perspective that addresses a wide range of harms, offences, and crimes related to the environment and environmental victims. This chapter provides a review of green criminological work on climate change, consumption and waste, state-corporate and organized crimes, animal abuse, and wildlife trafficking. It also considers the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to regulation and control.