Criminal redress in cases of environmental victimization: a defence1

Date01 May 2017
Published date01 May 2017
DOI10.1177/0269758016672027
Subject MatterArticles
Article
Criminal redress in cases of
environmental victimization:
a defence
1
Matthew Hall
University of Lincoln, UK
Abstract
In recent years, growing concern has been voiced in the environmental justice literature regarding
the ability of criminal justice mechanisms to adequately address environmental harms, especially
when such harms are perpetrated by large corporations. Commentators argue that criminal justice
processes are often ill-suited to the particular features of environmental cases, where the chain of
causation between wrongful actions/omissions and environmentally harmful consequence can be
very complexand extend over the course of manyyears. As an alternative,many such commentators
now favour the adoption of more administrative resolutions when corporate bodies breach their
environmentalobligations (which may or may not amount to ‘crimes’). Othersfavour the use of civil
sanction regimes, which is now the preferredapproach of the UK Environment Agency.In this paper
I will argue that the debate on how best to respond to environmental harm has so far neglected to
factor in the perspective of the victimsof those harms and, in particular,their need for redress. I will
argue that by incorporating such a perspective, as opposed to focusing largely on questions of
efficiency andcost-effectiveness, the criminal justice route still has much to recommend it, especially
in relation to the provision of meaningful redress and/or compensation to the victims of environ-
mental harm. Consequently, this paper will provide a victimological defence of the criminal justice
process, and of criminal penalties, in their application to cases of environmental harms.
Keywords
Environmental crime, green victimology, compensation, redress
Introduction
This paper concerns an increasingly pressing issue: the response of formal justice mechanisms to
the impacts of environmental crime on its (human) victims. The harms being vested on individuals
and communities across the world through environmentally polluting practices – often at the hands
Corresponding author:
Matthew Hall, Professor, Lincoln Law School, University of Lincoln, Bradford Pool, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK.
Email: MHall@lincoln.ac.uk
International Review of Victimology
2017, Vol. 23(2) 203–223
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758016672027
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of corporate entities – are increasingly understood and increasingly condemned by commentators
within and beyond the academy. Nevertheless, the mainstream legal and criminological literatures,
when they consider environmental harm at all, have tended to focus their attention on the proce-
dural efficiency of different justice solutions or the deterrence effects on polluters (Lynch et al.,
2010). Very little of this literature considers the victims of environmental harm directly and none
of it has systematically set out to compare different mechanisms of redress from the victim’s
perspective: along with how such redress might be better facilitated in all systems and what form
such redress might take.
The present article seeks to remedy this extremely unsatisfactory and potentially re-victimizing
state of affairs. It also seeks to challenge a present trend amongst commenters of criticizing and
deprioritizing criminal routes of responding to environmental harm (see White, 2011). In so doing,
the paper will argue that whilst both administrative compensation schemes and (more recently)
civil sanction regimes are now often touted as the ‘best’ means of responding to environmental
crimes or harms, few if any of these discussions focus on the issue of facilitating redress to the
victims of those harms. Nor have the prevailing debates encompassed the wider body of literature
from the field of victimology, where arguments concerning the delivery of compensation and/or
restitution to victims of crime have been developing for many years (see Miers, 1997; Zhang,
2008). In short, my argument is that much of the present literature has ignored victim redress and
victim satisfaction with any justice processes as criteria against which these systems should be
judged. My argument is that victimological understandings of what victims of crime require by
way of redress and due process from a justice system point to the continued relevance of the
criminal justice route to redress (or ‘restitution’) in cases of environmental victimization, as well as
prompting us to consider other reforms in both administrative schemes and criminal redress
mechanisms.
A focus by victimologists on environmental crime (and the wider concept of environmental
harm, to be discussed below) is one of the more recent outcomes of the broader development of
‘green criminology’ over the last twenty years (Hall, 2013). So far, however, there has been no
systematic assessment or applic ation of these broader victimological idea s to the question of
redress for victims of environmental harm through civil, administrative or criminal justice pro-
cesses. This paper sets out to correct this omission by scrutinizing the options for redress open to
victims of crime across a number of jurisdictions and offering the first systematic critical assess-
ment of their suitability for use i n environmental cases. In so doing the pape r will critically
examine the merits and demerits of civil litigation, administrative compensation schemes (both
the public-funded and corporate-funded varieties), civil sanctions regimes and criminal restitution
mechanisms in offering redress to environmental victims. Having completed the analysis described
above, the paper will then offer a framework for approaching redress in cases of environmental
crime and wider environmental harm. In particular, this model will advocate the expansion of
administrative compensation schemes beyond what is argued to be their current restrictive (often
politically and economically-motivated) limits to embrace wider forms of environmental victimi-
zation. Concurrently, I argue that restitution through criminal process still has a vital role to play
for its (potential) accessibility to a wid er group of environmental victims, its ability to offer
meaningful financial redress in case s of corporate polluters, and for the symbolic impact the
recognition of such harms as ‘criminally wrong’ can have both for victims and for society at large.
For the purpose of this discussion, the term ‘compensation’ will generally be used to refer to
monies paid to victims of environmental crime and harms by states from public funds. This will be
contrasted to ‘restitution’, which will normally come from (corporate /individual) perpetrators
204 International Review of Victimology 23(2)

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