Green criminology in the United States

As a discipline, criminology has neglected the crimes of the powerful and the laws and regulations that define, sanction and control these offences. Despite exceptions to this observation, research on crimes of the powerful remains underdeveloped, especially in relation to the level of harm caused by, and the extensive legal and social control apparatus directed towards these offences (Friedrichs 2004). More important to the current discussion, articles examining environmental crimes are virtually non-existent (Lynch, McGurrin and Fenwick 2004). In particular, American criminologists have done a dismal job investigating environmental crimes, laws and social control mechanisms, and have paid even less attention to the sub-field of environmental crimes studies called green criminology. Indeed, at this point in time, green criminology has received greater attention from criminologists in other countries, even though the idea was first proposed by an American criminologist.