green criminolog1

Green CriminologyStudent ID: 2512693

Green Criminology

Assignment One

Gary Potter

Student ID: 2512693

Word Count: 2030



This essay shall give a brief insight into the relatively new concept of green criminology. This shall be done by giving a brief description of the subject followed by an analysis of a topic of which is involved in green criminology. The topic I have chosen to study is that of illegal waste dumping. This essay will investigate the issues involved with regulating the disposing of waste into the ocean on a local and international level. It will be largely based on American cases and the regulations that the United States has enforced to try to halt this kind of pollution. It will analyse the case of the Ashland Oil Inc, where a spillage in Pennsylvania caused disastrous contamination to water supplies and destruction to wildlife habitats. Although this was an accident it raises the question of was the corporation abiding by the rules and regulation, or were corners cut in order to maximise profits.

The term green criminology is a somewhat recent phrase used to categorise certain types of crime. These would typically be crimes that effect the environment. There are initially two main clusters of green crimes. First are those crimes that result directly from the destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources, these are sometimes referred to as primary green crimes. There are four main primary categories of green crimes in which the environment becomes degraded through human actions – all of which have become the subject of legislative efforts in recent years. These new categories are crimes of air pollution, crimes of deforestation, crimes of species decline and against animal rights, and crimes of water pollution. They are the more common green crimes of which can be apparent in the media coverage today, however green crimes will not be evident in everyday news because the media tends to prefer more violent and at home crimes. The second types are those crimes that are evident from the violation of rules that seek to regulate environmental disasters. There are, for instance, numerous minor and major examples of governments breaking their own regulations and contributing to environmental harms crimes that are symbiotic with or dependent upon such process, these are referred to as secondary crimes. One example of this is the French governments sinking of the Green Peace ship the Rainbow Warrior in the Auckland harbour of New Zealand in 1985. The ship was scheduled to sail to the pacific to protest against the French nuclear tests in Moruroa, but was sunk in the Auckland harbour by French agents who were later arrested by the New Zealand police. A male photographer died on the vessel. The agents were sentenced to ten years of which they only served two and France was pressured to pay a sum of money to the Green Peace organisation. Alternatively if the French agents had not been caught red handed the incident may have been passed off as a terrorist attack, and justice (however relatively minimal) may not have ensued.

Ocean dumping, which can be identified as “the deliberate disposal of certain toxic, harmful, noxious or persistent substances and materials into the sea, constituting one of the major sources of pollution of the marine environment” has been a problem that was only recently given consideration with the spurt of environmental awarness during the 1970s (Kite-Powell: 1998). Given the complexity of the interrelationship between the economic, political and environmental interests involved, it appears to be particularly difficult to find a consensus on the means to deal with this problem. Typically, issues relating to marine pollution by intentional dumping fall into one of two categories: the establishment of rules or



standards and the enforcement of rules or standards. Pluralistic values have contributed to the rise in conflict between industrial and environmental groups, causing legislation to be passed, but watered down and weakly enforced. Sewage constitutes the largest volume of pollution discharged into the ocean. Since there are densely populated cities on the American coast, about 35 percent of all treated municipal sewage is discharged into the ocean. Many of these cities are also located on some of the nation’s best-known bays and harbours, which are, as a result, badly polluted. The New York City harbour receives the city’s sewage during heavy rain. The city’s sludge is deposited in the Atlantic Ocean about 106 miles off shore. Only the United States and Great Britain currently dump significant quantities of sewage sludge at sea (World Resources Institute: 1987). Public policy response to contamination of the oceans from all sources has been largely anticipatory in nature. There are various international conventions, regional conventions, and national laws establishing policy for the protection of the ocean.

The dumping of waste into water sources obviously has a negative affect on our environment, however it also has a major affect on the individual humans health and wellbeing. International law has addressed the problem of ocean pollution. The UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, adopted in 1982, defines pollution of the oceans as ‘The introduction by man, directly or indirectly, of substances or energy into the marine environment, including estuaries, which results or is likely to result in such deleterious effects as harm to living resources and marine life, hazards to human health, hindrance to marine activities, including fishing and other legitimate uses of the sea, impairment of quality for use of sea water and reduction of amenities.’ (Kiss: 1991).

The first convention addressing the problem of marine pollution was the Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil, adopted in 1954. However, the reach of this convention was very narrow, limited to deliberate discharges in specified sensitive zones. The Stockholm Declaration was introduced on June 16th 1972. The declaration states that ‘Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well being’ (Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment Stockholm, June 5-16, 1972). This was the first document to specifically recognise the individual’s right to live in a healthy environment. This shows the growing concern for the environment of which a decade ago was not considered at all. Many act international acts and regulations have followed this declaration in the field of protecting the humans way of life. The first attempt at a comprehensive convention was the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1973. Considerable support existed for declaring the seas the “common heritage of mankind” and making them manageable by an international body. However, the result of the conference was substantially more modest. The participation nations failed to agree on a comprehensive treaty. Instead, the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea declared only the deep seabed’s a “common heritage” and specified that all nations should benefit from deep seabed resources (Kiss: 1991).



There is a vast amount of intentional ocean dumping happening today but aside from that, there have been many accidental oil spillages in recent history. One of which Ashland Oil Incorporated, the largest oil refiner in the country at the time of this case analysis, was faced with a great dilemma when one of the tanks constructed by the company itself, ruptured while being filled. It contaminated drinking sources for over a million people in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. In this instance it was apparent that the Ashland Oil Inc was responsible for the spillage. The corporation was prosecuted for negligence and after many safety precautions and regulation had not been abided by. Ashland violated several statutes under the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is an administrative agency housed under the American Federal government. The EPA is one such independent administrative agency that was created to deal with the federal government’s environmental responsibilities and has enabling legislation regarding water and air pollution, solid waste disposal, water supply, pesticide and radiation control, and ocean dumping. The EPA is responsible for coordinating all environmental protection actions at all levels in the United States. Although the EPA is the federal agency that most frequently investigates environmental crimes, Congress has not granted it the power to prosecute environmental crimes. Instead, after an agency official has determined that the violation of an environmental regulation is potentially criminal in nature, EPA issues a recommendation to the U.S. Department of Justice that charges should be filed against the violator. After investigating the case further, a U.S. attorney uses prosecutorial discretion in deciding whether or not to proceed with a criminal case. Several factors are important to the prosecutor in deciding whether the behavior should be considered criminal, including the severity of the actual or potential damages, whether intent has been shown, whether the violator was cooperative, and whether there is a history of similar violations. If the prosecutor decides to file charges, the defendant has the same constitutional rights and protections that are provided in any criminal case. The actions taken by Ashland, including sidestepping the permit protocol and rushing through testing, have obvious legal ramifications. They were held accountable by law to do everything in their power to prevent such an accident from occurring. The main thrust of the implications of this case are that owner-operators of facilities with hazardous materials are legally bound to protect those resources from being dangerously mishandled. In this case the victim of the crime was the whole state of Pennsylvania. The citizens were without clean drinking water and the habitat of the surrounding area was greatly destroyed. Agencies such as the EPA are vital in regulating and helping to prevent both intentional and unintentional waste disposal.

The Ashland Oil Inc helped the surrounding environment with an eleven million dollar clean up operation and this was considered when legal prosecution ensued. However the limited regulation over waste dumping, especially in advanced Western industrial nations, has created a highly profitable domestic and international trade in illegal disposal and dumping of hazardous toxic waste. This has manifested itself in new forms of corporate organised crime (Ruggiero: 1996), toxic and general waste-dumping is an increasingly significant crime. Ruggiero cites cases involving criminal groups from Germany transporting hazardous waste into France, and an entrepreneur in northern England who ran a legal waste-disposal firm and alongside this a service providing illegal dumping of ‘hard to dispose of ’ waste. The illegal disposal of hazardous waste has been thoroughly studied in the USA,



where in some cases the involvement of organized crime reaches all aspects of the business, from the control of which companies are officially licensed to dispose of waste to those which earn contracts with public or private organizations and to the payment of bribes to dump-site owners, or the possession of such sites. Paradoxically, the development of this illegal service runs parallel with an increase in environmental awareness, the latter forcing governments to raise costs for industrial dumping, which indirectly encourages industrialists to opt for cheaper solutions (Ruggiero: 1996).

When waste is dumped illegally by these organisations it will be primarily for the gain of money, to save on disposal costs. Corporations call it profit maximisation. It can be an obvious assumption that the waste will not be disposed of near the wealthier citizens. The lower class are usually left to bear the brunt of the illegal waste dumping and unintentional oil spills. The large corporations are incredibly hard to prosecute for environmental crime because of many factors.

In conclusion this essay has established exactly what green criminology is and outlined the variety of green crimes that are occurring today. It has identified the rules and regulations in place to tackle both illegal waste dumping and unintentional spillages and shown the effectiveness of the measures in the Ashland Oil Inc case.



Bibliography

Literature

Vincenzo Ruggiero, Organized and Corporate Crime in Europe: Offers that Can't Be Refused: 1996

Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment Stockholm, June 5-16, 1972

Kite-Powell, H.L., P. Hoagland, and D. Jin. 1998. Policy, law, and public opposition: the prospects for abyssal ocean waste disposal in the United States. Journal of Marine Systems

Deep Seabed Cultural Property and the Common Heritage of Mankind, Kiss: 1998

World Resources Institute, 1987

Websites

United States v. Ashland Oil and Transportation Company. Retrieved October 10, 2003 from the Environmental Law Reporter web site: http://www.elr.info/litigation/vol4/4.20185.htm

http://www.wri.org/publication/world-resources-1987-assessment-resource-base-supports-global-economy




http://www.elr.info/litigation/vol4/4.20185.htm

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