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The study of crime has traditionally focused on offending by individuals within national borders. However, three interconnected developments have expanded the scope of criminology: globalisation has created new forms of transnational crime; growing awareness of environmental harm has raised questions about the criminalisation of ecological damage; and attention to state crime has challenged the assumption that crime is committed only by individuals and corporations against the state.
Key Definition: Globalisation is the increasing interconnectedness of societies across the world through the movement of goods, capital, information, and people. It creates both new opportunities for crime and new challenges for crime prevention.
Manuel Castells (1998) argued that globalisation has created a network society in which flows of capital, information, and people cross national borders with unprecedented speed and ease. This has transformed the nature of crime in several ways:
| Change | Explanation |
|---|---|
| New criminal opportunities | The internet, global banking systems, and cheap international travel have created new opportunities for fraud, identity theft, cybercrime, drug trafficking, people trafficking, and money laundering. |
| Transnational criminal networks | Criminal organisations operate across national borders, exploiting differences in laws, policing, and regulation between countries. The line between "legitimate" and "criminal" global businesses is often blurred. |
| Deregulation | The global trend toward economic deregulation (reducing state control of markets) has created opportunities for corporate crime, tax evasion, and financial fraud on a massive scale. |
| New risks | Globalisation has increased the risks associated with crime — for example, the global drugs trade, international terrorism, and cyber attacks that can affect millions of people simultaneously. |
Ian Taylor (1997) used the concept of glocalisation to describe the way global economic changes affect local patterns of crime. As manufacturing has moved from Western countries to lower-wage economies, communities that depended on industrial employment have experienced deindustrialisation, unemployment, and social disintegration. This has created the conditions for increased crime in these areas — both "crimes of the streets" (robbery, drug dealing) and "crimes of the suites" (corporate fraud, tax evasion by the wealthy who benefit from globalisation).
Taylor argued that globalisation has:
Beck (1992) argued that we live in a risk society — a late-modern society characterised by new, manufactured risks that are global in scope and difficult to control. These risks include environmental degradation, nuclear threats, and global pandemics. For criminologists, risk society theory highlights the way globalisation has created new forms of harm that do not fit traditional definitions of crime.
Green crime (also called environmental crime) refers to crime and deviance that harms the natural environment. It is a rapidly growing area of sociological interest, driven by increasing awareness of climate change, pollution, deforestation, and species extinction.
Key Definition: Green criminology is the study of harms committed against the natural environment, including both acts that are illegal (breaking environmental laws) and acts that are legal but cause significant environmental damage.
There are two broad approaches to defining green crime:
| Approach | Definition | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional (state-defined) | Green crime is defined as behaviour that breaks existing environmental laws and regulations. | Illegal dumping of toxic waste, illegal logging, poaching endangered species, breaching pollution limits. |
| Transgressive (harm-based) | Green crime should be defined in terms of the harm caused to the environment and to human and animal well-being, regardless of whether the behaviour is currently illegal. This approach recognises that many of the most environmentally destructive activities are perfectly legal. | Legal deforestation of the Amazon, legal but harmful intensive farming practices, legal greenhouse gas emissions by fossil fuel companies. |
The transgressive approach is associated with Rob White (2008) and Nigel South (2010), who argue that traditional definitions of green crime are too narrow because they allow governments and corporations to cause massive environmental harm without legal consequence.
Beirne (1999, 2007) argued for an approach to green criminology that extends the concept of rights beyond humans to include non-human animals. He argued that many accepted practices — factory farming, animal testing, habitat destruction — constitute crimes against other species, even if they are currently legal.
South (2010) distinguished between two types of green crime:
| Type | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Primary green crimes | Direct harm to the environment, committed by individuals, corporations, or states. | Deforestation, air and water pollution, species extinction, destruction of habitats. |
| Secondary green crimes | Harm arising from the failure to prevent or regulate environmental damage — including the failure of governments to enforce environmental laws. | Governments failing to enforce pollution controls, regulatory agencies being captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate, states subsidising environmentally destructive industries. |
The explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and released approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean over 87 days. It was the largest accidental marine oil spill in history.
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