Teaching environmental crime in a criminal justice curriculum

Abstract

The emergence of environmental offenses offers a new challenge to criminal justice educators. The public increasingly perceives pollution as a criminal offense. Numerous environmental protection statutes have been passed or amended over the past decade to provide criminal sanctions for environmental offenders, but criminal justice educators have barely begun to acknowledge this “criminalization” in the curriculum. This article reviews findings from a national survey on the status of environmental crime courses in criminal justice and related programs throughout the country. The authors advocate adding environmental crime to the criminal justice curriculum and offer guidelines for designing such a course.