Environmental harms exert a significant toll and pose substantial economic costs on societies around the world. Although such harms have been studied from both legal and social science perspectives, these disciplinary-specific approaches are not, on their own, fully able to address the complexity of these environmental challenges. Many legal approaches, for example, are limited by their inattention to the motivations behind environmental offences, whereas many social science approaches are hindered by an insufficient grounding in current legislative frameworks. This edited collection constitutes a pioneering attempt to overcome these limitations by uniting legal and social science perspectives. Together, the book’s contributors forge an innovative socio-legal approach to more effectively respond to, and to prevent, environmental harms around the world. Integrating theoretical and empirical work, the book presents carefully selected illustrations of how legal and social science scholarship can be brought together to improve policies. The various chapters examine how a socio-legal approach can ultimately lead to a more comprehensive understanding of environmental harms, as well as to innovative and effective responses to such environmental offences.

In Indian context; contributed articles.

This book provides a critical study of environmental regulation and its enforcement in New Zealand, situated within green criminology. It seeks to address the question of whether the offences in the Resource Management Act 1991 are 'working', by drawing on a range of sources including: central government data, local government policies and reports on enforcement, information requests of councils, studies of local authority enforcement behaviour and case law to. Through highly layered and richly textured analysis, the project exposes the problems that can arise when an expansive approach is taken to offences, penalties and institutional arrangements in an environmental regulatory statute. It emphasizes how discussions of harm and what should be unlawful will ensure that law-makers' enforcement tools will align with their goals for punishment. It examines higher-level issues such as ‘wrongfulness’ and ‘criminality’ in the environmental regulatory context and explores the relevance of its findings to jurisdictions outside of New Zealand. It also discusses the pros and cons of criminalisation and punishment versus restoration. It speaks to those interested in green criminology, regulatory compliance and enforcement, and applications of criminal law.

In recent years, the increasing focus on climate change and environmental degradation has prompted unprecedented attention being paid towards the criminal liability of individuals, organisations and even states for polluting activities. These developments have given rise to a new area of criminological study, often called ‘green criminology’. Yet in all the theorising that has taken place in this area, there is still a marked absence of specific focus on those actually suffering harm as a result of environmental degradation. This book represents a unique attempt to substantively conceptualise and examine the place of such ‘environmental victims’ in criminal justice systems both nationally and internationally. Grounded in a comparative approach and drawing on critical criminological arguments, this volume examines many of the areas traditionally considered by victimologists in relation to victims of environmental crime and, more widely, environmental harm. These include victims’ rights, compensation, treatment by criminal justice systems and participation in that process. The book approaches the issue of ‘environmental victimisation’ from a ‘social harms’ perspective (as opposed to a ‘criminal harms’ one) thus problematising the definitions of environmental crime found within most jurisdictions. Victims of Environmental Harm concludes by mapping out the contours of further research into a developing green victimology and how this agenda might inform criminal justice reform and policy making at national and global levels.This book will be of interest to researchers across a number of disciplines including criminology, international law, victimology, socio-legal studies and physical sciences as well as professionals involved in policy making processes.

This book explores the philosophical, theoretical and legal bases that underpin the linkage between human rights and the environment. Such linkage, grounded in reality, is an innovative way of addressing environmental issues through the lens of a well-established international human rights system. The book argues that a new set of environmental rights is gradually forging its way into international law and suggests a re-configuration of the human rights system in the context of sustainable development and the notion of solidarity rights. In doing so, two sets of concepts are considered: first, the possibility of a rapprochement between environmental ethics and the human rights doctrine and, second, the theoretical and practical links among the concepts of development, democracy, environment and sustainable development.

This book presents a socio-criminological study of environmental crime in the global South. It gathers contributors from all the regions of the geographical global South (Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America) to discuss instances of environmental crime and conflict. Overall, it seeks to further decolonise the knowledge production of green criminology. It considers the legacy of colonisation, North-South and the core-periphery divides in the production of environmental crime, the epistemological contributions of the marginalised, impoverished, and oppressed, and the unique contexts of the global South. This book has three sections: drivers of green crime in the global South; responses to environmental harm in the global South; and global dialogues about crime and destruction in the global South. The first two sections represent the breadth of the topics that green criminologists have historically studied but from unique perspectives. The third section explores ethical and decolonial ways for Southern green criminology to collaborate with Western academia. This book speaks to scholars in criminology, political ecology, decolonial theory, along with the many readers interested in the interactions between humans and nature.

Crime, Deviance and Society: An Introduction to Sociological Criminology offers a comprehensive introduction to criminological theory. The book introduces readers to key sociological theories, such as anomie and strain, and examines how traditional approaches have influenced the ways in which crime and deviance are constructed. It provides a nuanced account of contemporary theories and debates, and includes chapters covering feminist criminology, critical masculinities, cultural criminology, green criminology, and postcolonial theory, among others. Case studies in each chapter demonstrate how sociological theories can manifest within and influence the criminal justice system and social policy. Each chapter also features margin definitions and timelines of contributions to key theories, reflection questions and end-of-chapter questions that prompt students reflection. Written by an expert team of academics from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, Crime, Deviance and Society is a highly engaging and accessible introduction to the field for students of criminology and criminal justice.