Essay Plan- Using material from item A and elsewhere, assess sociological explanations for the types and patterns of green crime. a

USING MATERIAL FROM ITEM A AND ELSEWHERE, ASSESS SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS FOR THE TYPES AND PATTERNS OF GREEN CRIME. 

PARAGRAPH ONE

Green crime is environmental crime of which rapidly increased with the enlightenment, and as ITEM A SUGGESTS 'IT IS AN INEVITABLE PART OF LATE MODERN SOCIETY'. Green crime has a unique nature due to the fact the world is divided into nation states and therefore green crime is hard to prosecute as we all have separate jurisdiction. For example, one nation state can damage and interconnected eco state with the form of acid rain pollution. BECK argues that in late modernity (our post-modern society) we can now provide adequate resources- however this allows manufactured risks to also develop such as Greenhouse gases from the productivity. MESSNER AND ROSENFIELD would suggest that the reason these manufactured risks develop is due to our capitalist 'Dog eat dog' attitude, we live in a consumerist postmodern society and therefore want more technological developments which produce green crime. 

WHITE backs up the view in ITEM A THAT SUGGESTS 'SINCE NO LAWS ARE BROKEN, SOME DO NOT CONSIDER IT TO BE A CRIME'. He presents two different attitudes towards the 'harm' that green crime creates. Anthropocentric harm is a human centred view of environmental crime. This is generally adopted by he nation states and transnational corporations who assume that humans have the right to dominate the natural environment. This implies that the damage is not a crime, or even a deviant action as humans believe they have the right to partake in productivity, whether there are manufactured risks or not. Ecocentric harm on the other hand sees humans and their environment as inter-dependent and that environmental harm hurts humans as well. Green criminologists would generally adopt this view as their basis for judging environmental harm, implying that their ultimate view is that green crime is a crime and a deviant action. 

SITU AND EMMONS are Traditional criminologists who define environmental crime as 'an unauthorises act or omission that violates the law'. They therefore focus on the paterns and causes of law breaking. A traditional viewpoint has some advantages such as it has a clearly defined subject matter, however it is criticised for accepting official definitions of environmental problems which are often shaped by powerful groups and therefore socially constructed. Green criminology however takes a much more radical approach starting from this notion of 'harm' rather that criminal law. WHITE further argues that the attention of criminology should be any action that harms the physical environment and or human or non human animals within it, even if a law has not been broken. For this reason, green criminology can be viewed as a form of transgressive criminology which gets rid of the problem of jurisdiciton as it is…