Should Green offenders face criminal courts?
Published 30 September 2011
A new "Green crime" university course that argues that some environmental disasters should be treated as crimes, has been backed by Brighton Green MP Caroline Lucas.
The course has been developed by Matt Follett, lecturer in criminology in the School of Applied Social Science at the University of Brighton. He has been assisted by Professor Peter Squires, the university's Professor of Criminology and Public Policy, and one of the country's leading experts on crime.
The course, launched for the first time last year, covers the regulation of environmental harms including food safety, animal rights and pollution control.
Brighton MP Caroline Lucas, the country's first Green MP, said: "This is a topic that is really needed in the world today – by teaching young students about the harms that are often created by how we produce our food, how we deal with toxic waste, how we police environmental damage and how we get governments and companies to take these harms seriously, Matt and the University of Brighton are making a vital contribution to public knowledge and debate on key challenges facing society."
Matt explained the reasons behind the Green Criminology course module and specific teaching agenda: "There is a growing body of research that seeks to apply criminological approaches to activities that, until relatively recently, have not been seen as criminal.
"With concern growing over environmental damage by human activity it is felt that some activities that harm the environment and by definition all species including humans living on this planet, can be viewed as crimes.
"We explore why nation states like the UK flout international laws around the disposal of nuclear waste by sending it to countries like Russia and Italy.
"We find out how one arm of organised crime in Italy is focused around large-scale environmental waste disposal carried out by large corporations and governments.
"We explore how the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984 when 3,000 people died after a gas leak, was triggered by attempts to slacken regulations on the use of chemicals.
"We look at the impact of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and we explore how supermarket fruit and veg' production is linked to immigration crimes."
Matt, who was elected a Brighton and Hove Council Green councillor earlier this year, said public concerns about Green crimes were on the increase. The concerns were shared by campaigners including chef, Jamie Oliver, and journalist, Felicity Lawrence, who have voiced fears about current junk food production methods.
He said: "One of the more notorious food crimes of recent years was the prosecution and jailing in Derbyshire of 'Maggot Pete' for selling unfit meat to hospitals and supermarkets.
"Green Criminology essentially asks the question as to why we police only some of these activities and why we treat some as mere breaches of regulations rather than as crimes."
Matt said the course specifically offers:
- An introduction to Green Criminology.
- Environmental issues in criminology including pollution, prevention, and policing.
- Environmental damage and waste regulation: the problem of big business and big government.
- Animals and plants: polar bears and the Amazon jungle – why should we care?
- Food crime - production, packaging, and promotion.
The course begins again in October 2011 as a third-year option for the university's 200-plus criminology undergraduates. Only 30 applicants are accepted onto the 12-week course and many of the 200 are expected to apply.
He said: "Only one or two other institutions in the country offer anything similar to this module but this is becoming increasingly important.
"One of the main issues looked at by many Green criminologists is the role of concepts of rights of animals and wildlife: This is not simply just a case of protecting species because they look nice. This is about forest logging in the Amazon and depletion of fish stocks and their knock-on effects on the local and wider ecology. It raises broader questions about how this affects us all.
"There are also debates to be had about what justification there really is for 'rights' of species that cannot articulate those rights for themselves.
"We take a look at the food we eat and the way we buy it. We discuss the food industry, food marketing, and our own consumption habits. We examine a wide range of issues, including obesity, immigration, headline crimes like the death of cockle pickers in Morecombe, and how beef waste ends up in chicken.
"In addition, there are international regulatory concerns about wildlife crime – the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in 2008 called for international cooperation to combat the trafficking of forest products including timber and wildlife."
Anyone doubting the value of timber and wildlife to criminals, he said, should heed the words of the experts: The independent Environmental Investigation Agency's forest campaigner, Julian Newman, recently said: "Trafficking in forest products is a major global crime. The World Bank estimates that illegal logging costs developing countries up to $15 billion a year, and Interpol puts the value of wildlife crime at $10 billion a year."
Professor Squires said: "We are really excited about the new course that Matt is developing. For a long time criminology has been intellectually tied to a narrow conception of the processing of offenders by the criminal justice system. By contrast, the new green perspective helps us to take the subject forwards, using the discipline's methods and insights to ask some searching questions about the production of harms and inequalities and new ways of regulating them."
Professor Julian Crampton, University of Brighton Vice-Chancellor, said: "Fighting climate change and preventing environmental damage are two of the most demanding challenges we face. This new course dovetails into this university's ethos of doing all we can to provide a sustainable future for generations to come, as evidenced by our commitment to cut our university's carbon emissions by 50 per cent in five years."
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