Green criminology is now nearly 30 years old. In that time, a substantial
literature has been written, the issues or subject matter addressed by that
literature has expanded significantly, and the number of researchers who
have contributed to that literature has multiplied many times over. These
trends indicate that green criminology is now an established part of the
more general field of criminology, and the persistence of this view suggests
it will not disappear anytime soon.
Our own involvement and contributions to the green criminological
literature—to the study of green crimes and harms, assessments of environmental
laws and their applications, the various forms of green (in)
justice and environmental (in)justice that are related to the distribution
of green crime/harm, pollution, ecological disorganization and patterns
in and the effects of enforcement of environmental law on green crimes—
have centered on taking a political economic approach to those concerns,
problems and outcomes. Some of that work is empirical, and some is
theoretical and definitional. This book is not an exception to the political
economic orientation to green criminology we have developed over the
years—it is, in fact, an expansion of our view on a political economic
green criminology—and falls within contributions to theoretical and
definitional development within green criminology. Increasingly, we
believe, our view has become more closely aligned with environmental
sociology and, as a result, of less interest within criminology.