Fighting Environmental Crime in Europe and Beyond

Abstract

In this chapter, I argue that the way in which legislators have viewed environmental crime, that is, the way environmental crime has been defined in legislation, has dramatically changed in the past 30 years. I explore two key examples in which this development was largely influenced by various crucial doctrinal moves. The first involves a German legal doctrine that emerged in the 1980s which addressed the legal dogmatic foundations of environmental criminal law. Amorerecentinstanceis found in the UK where scholars (and increasingly policymakers) argue that in addition to the criminal law, administrative fine systems should be added to the available enforcement tools. Such doctrinal moves have had a marked, albeit implicit, effect on policy change that can be observed in the way environmental crime is now articulated in legislation, particularly as it relates to other enforcement systems.