A Harm Analysis of Environmental Crime

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges for the study of environmental crime is the analysis of harms against the environment, and how these are prosecuted (or not) and sanctioned. Bricknell (2010: 117) proposed the need for a comprehensive analysis of a specific environmental harm and ‘the array of current and potential preventative, enforcement and punishment responses’. White (2008) describes the need for a scoping analysis of environmental harms, and then reminds us that ‘adequate data collection and analysis forms part of what is needed if environmental prosecution and sentencing is to move forward’ (White, 2010: 379). White notes the exception of New South Wales, because there is now a sentencing database available from the New South Wales Land and Environment Court (NSWLEC). This chapter takes up that challenge and describes a study of environmental harms and responses in that Australian specialist court. The NSWLEC has considered environmental planning and protection to be criminal enforcement matters since the inception of the court in 1980.