Abstract
Green criminologist Rob White (2007, 2012) suggests that given the potential for environmental harms to extend far beyond the impact on individual victims that are the norm with ‘traditional’ crimes of interpersonal violence and property crime, green crimes should be given importance if not priority within justice systems.
This chapter brings together several themes concerning policing, regulation and prosecution of environmental harms. Its focus is on the prosecution of organised environmental crime with a consideration of how varied judicial and regulatory approaches can more effectively address environmental harms. This chapter discusses the potential ineffectiveness of criminal law approaches where wildlife and environmental laws have been designed as administrative, regulatory and conservation management law rather than as ‘pure’ criminal law. This chapter notes the benefits of civil and administrative mechanisms that focus more on repairing harm and changing behaviour. In examining the prosecution of organised environmental crime, this chapter identifies how green criminology’s engagement with legal discourse examines complex issues in criminological enquiry that extend beyond the narrow confines of individualistic crime.
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Notes
- 1.
This number does not include fisheries and timber commodities, which are also subject to illegal trade and so the actual value is likely much higher.
- 2.
At time of writing, the Convention has 196 parties (1688 signatures) according to the CBD Secretariat.
- 3.
The Directive defines environmental damage as covering the most serious environmental harms including: damage to protected species and natural habitats, adverse effects on surface water or groundwater and contamination of land that results in a significant risk of adverse effects on human health.
- 4.
In the United Kingdom, for example, all police officers are now required to undertake a degree. Yet wildlife crime is not included in the curriculum specified by the main policing education body (College of Policing, 2021).
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Nurse, A. (2023). Policing the Environment: The Prosecution of Wildlife and Environmental Crimes. In: Nelen, H., Siegel, D. (eds) Organized Crime in the 21st Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21576-6_11
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