Abstract
This article examines studies related to environmental justice in the criminological literature and from a criminological perspective. Criminologists have long been concerned with injustices in the criminal justice system related to the enforcement of criminal law. In the 1990s, following the emergence of green criminology, a handful of criminologists have drawn attention to environmental justice as an extension of more traditional criminological studies of justice and injustice. Relevant criminological studies of environmental justice are reviewed, and suggestions for future environmental justice research are offered.
Highlights
20 August 2015This article examines research on environmental justice from a criminological perspective
A core area of research within the field of criminology is the examination of the process of justice and whether criminal justice processes mete out justice fairly
Does that literature consider the association between class, race, ethnicity and environmental justice, or whether justice processes exhibit class, racial and ethnic biases related to the control of environmental pollution/destruction or in the application of punishments and other social control responses designed to contain environmental crime and injustice
Summary
This article examines research on environmental justice from a criminological perspective. Criminologists have long addressed issues of justice and injustice, but have largely confined those studies to examinations of criminal justice processes. Such criminal justice studies examine whether the application of law produces ‘just’ or ‘fair’ outcomes, and has relevance to examinations of the distribution of environmental harms and differentials in the enforcement of environmental regulations with respect to the effect community class, race and ethnic composition may have on those decisions. As a form of injustice, differential exposure to environmental toxins across communities is relevant to criminological research on state crime, corporate crime and state-corporate crime. Much work remains for criminologists to undertake to more fully incorporate the concept of environmental justice within the criminological literature
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