An Assessment of Tonry and Farrington’s Four Major Crime Prevention Strategies as Applied to Environmental Crime and Harm
Purpose:
To apply the findings and debates arising from the “mainstream” literature on crime prevention to the increasingly urgent issue of crimes and harms that damage the environment. This is also a missing dimension in the rapidly growing field of green criminology.
Design/Methods/Approach:
The method is literature review, including analysis and synthesis of earlier summaries and typologies. Search and selection was aimed at identifying different forms of and strategies for crime prevention that might then be applied to environmental harms and crimes. This leads to a discussion of key findings and models in relation to the theoretical and practical concerns of green criminology.
Findings:
Examining theory and practice concerning the prevention of environmental crimes and harms opens up important new questions and projects for criminology. The framework explored holds promise but in the future a passive prevention approach will need to be supplemented by active interventions to discourage environmentally damaging behaviours.
Research Limitations / Implications:
The process of studying prevention of environmental crimes and harms is still in its infancy and requires further work. It is clear that there are obstacles both to further research and to implementation of measures, however, due to the fact that powerful commercial and political interests may not wish to draw attention to such crimes and harms, may prefer light-touch systems of regulation, and may contest attempts to publicise or prosecute offences.
Practical Implications:
Measures taken to protect persons and property have a long history but a focus on how to prevent individuals and groups from committing crime is more recent. Green criminologists frequently extend their concerns beyond crime and harm covered by existing (criminal) law and, as such, the prevention of environmental harm and crime is broad in scope and more difficult to effect. Furthermore, such harm and crime is frequently not viewed as “real” crime and not “valued” sufficiently by the law, which also impedes efforts to prevent its occurrence. The more that traditional crime prevention agendas, practice and literature incorporate the subject of the environment, the more effective future efforts may be.
Originality/Value:
It has been argued that if we compare rates of “ordinary crime” to environmental harms and crimes, the latter would significantly outnumber the former (Lynch, 2013). Yet although there is a substantial literature on “ordinary crime prevention”, there is relatively little discussion in the literature about the application of crime prevention approaches to environmental harms and crimes. This is one of very few reviews of this field and therefore makes a contribution to theory and practice in both mainstream and green criminology, which have both neglected this topic.
UDC: 343.3/.7: 504
Keywords: crime prevention, environmental crime, environmental harm, green criminology, strategies, typologies