New Methods to Enhance the Study of Environmental Crimes and New Instruments to Strengthen Crime Prevention

• Author: Serena Favarin
• DOI: 10.1177/1043986220939705
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020
• Subject Matter: Introduction to the Special Issue

https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986220939705

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2020, Vol. 36(3) 300 –302

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1043986220939705

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Introduction to the Special Issue

New Methods to Enhance

the Study of Environmental

Crimes and New Instruments

to Strengthen Crime

Prevention

Illegal trade in wildlife, illegal logging and timber trading, unregulated fishing, illegal

coral harvesting, as well as the illicit trade of waste and smuggling of ozone-depleting

substances are, along with other environmental crimes, detrimentally affecting the

quality of air, water, and soil, threatening the survival of fauna and flora, causing

irreparable damage to our planet, along with placing a heavy burden on both human

health and the economic livelihood of billions of people across the globe. However,

despite the nascent global awareness of environmental crimes, this area of scientific

inquiry requires further investigation by means of rigorous methods to produce sound

empirical knowledge that can inform law enforcement activities and criminal justice

systems, and advise policy makers. More specifically, several scholars have high-

lighted the need to produce new solid empirical research on environmental crimes, and

recommended utilizing quantitative methods that have hitherto been neglected in this

field (Lynch et al., 2017; Lynch & Pires, 2019; Nobles, 2019).

The special issue New Quantitative and Qualitative Methods to Investigate

Environmental Crimes seeks to improve extant understanding of environmental

crimes, advocate for the use of new methods through which to study this topic, and

enhance the preventive measures to combat these crimes. I am pleased to introduce

this special issue that comprises expert contributions from multiple countries (i.e.,

Australia, Italy, Sweden, the United States, and the United Kingdom). The articles

included in this issue employ different methodological approaches (i.e., quantitative,

qualitative, and mixed-methods) to analyze several types of environmental crime in

different offline and online contexts around the world (e.g., the illegal harvesting of

live corals in Indonesia and Fiji, environmental crimes in protected areas in Cambodia,

online illegal trade in endangered plants, and illicit waste trafficking at the global

level). Moreover, they present innovative methodological solutions to the study of

environmental crimes and guide future researchers in how to construct databases to

quantitatively investigate corporate environmental crimes.

The first article in this special issue introduces the use of counter-mapping and

activist tools as both a new method through which to investigate environmental crimes

and as a means to quantify and demonstrate environmental harm in Australia (Barnes

& White, 2020). The second article applies risk terrain modeling (RTM) to study fauna

and flora–related illegal activities (e.g., illegal logging, flora and fauna poaching) in

939705CCJXXX10.1177/1043986220939705Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeFavarin

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