Introducing Conservation Criminology: Towards Interdisciplinary Scholarship on Environmental Crimes and Risks

Environmental crimes, noncompliance and risks create significant harm to the health of humans and the natural world. Yet, the field of criminology has historically shown relatively little interest in the topic. The emergence of environmental or green criminology over the past decade marks a shift in this trend, but attempts to define a unique area of study have been extensively criticized. In the following paper, we offer a conceptual framework, called conservation criminology, designed to advance current discussions of green crime via the integration of criminology with natural resource disciplines and risk and decision sciences. Implications of the framework for criminological and general research on environmental crime and risks are discussed.