Abstract
In this article, I focus on green criminology’s relationship with theory with the aim of describing some of its animating features and offering some suggestions for green criminology’s further emergence. In so doing, I examine green criminology’s intra-disciplinary theoretical engagement and the notion of applying different meanings and interpretations to established theory. Following this, I explore green criminology’s interface with theories and ideas outside criminology – what I refer to as green criminology’s extra-disciplinary theoretical engagement. I conclude by suggesting that green criminology has shed light on the etiology of environmental crime and harm (including climate change), and that it will continue to illuminate not only how and why environmental crime and harm occurs, but also the meaning of such crime and harm.
Highlights
In the 25 years since green criminologists have devoted most of their attention to illuminating and describing different types of environmental harm
Brisman and South (2013, 2014) have argued that green criminology must attend to the mediated and political dynamics surrounding the presentation of various environmental phenomena, especially news about real environmental crimes, harms, and disaster, and fictional/science‐fictional depictions of human‐nature/human‐environment relationships and environmental disaster narratives
Motivated more by the question of ‘How does the organization of society promote an increasing level of environmental harm?’ rather than ‘What causes an individual to engage in acts that harm the environment?’ (Stretesky et al 2014: 9), some scholars have attempted to explore the political economy of environmental crime – or what some of them refer to as ‘green crime’ (Stretesky et al 2014: 4)4 – using ‘treadmill of production’ (ToP) theory, as developed in environmental sociology by Schnaiberg (1980; see Gould et al 2008)
Summary
Since the early 1990s, when first proposed by Lynch (1990), ‘green criminology’ has been concerned with environmental crimes and harms affecting human and non‐human life, ecosystems, and the planet as a whole.1 In the 25 years since green criminologists have devoted most of their attention to illuminating and describing different types of environmental harm. The examples of Agnew, Stretesky and Du Rées represent attempts to explain environmental crime and harm at the micro‐ or individual‐level and macro‐ or group‐level using dominant criminological theories.
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