NCJ Number
225947
Date Published
2008
Length
331 pages
Annotation
This book relates concerns about human behavior that causes deterioration in the quality of the natural environment to the core concerns of criminology, while charting new directions for defining and responding to crimes against nature.
Abstract
The first of three major parts of the book focuses on theoretical perspectives that frame the nature, adverse effects, causes, and response to environmental crimes. The first chapter in this section proposes a theory of environmental rights for both humans and animals that facilitate their health, survival, and instinctual need for interaction with the natural world. The second chapter focuses on “social constructions of environmental problems,” which pertains to the various ways in which environmental problems are socially constructed through media conceptualizations of competing notions of rights that may or may not be supportive of long-term physical and mental health for humans and animals. The third chapter of the first section discusses theoretical perspectives of environmental risk, its assessment, and its management through precautionary and preventive action. The second major section of the book addresses environmental crime. The first of three chapters in this section discusses the dimensions of environmental crime. Topics cover the definition of “environmental harm,” the categorization of environmental harm, and the measurement of crimes and their effects. The other two chapters of this section focus on transnational environmental crime, with attention to the problem of waste and biodiversity; and how to explain environmental harm in the context of capitalism, population growth, technological development, private property, and consumption. The final section addresses the response to environmental harm. Four chapters cover environmental law enforcement, environmental regulation, environmental crime prevention, and global environmental issues and sociolegal intervention. 358 references and a subject index