Verso una green criminology. Il criminologo di fronte allo scenario ambientale

A broad definition of environmental crime prevails in “green criminology”, encompassing also those dimensions of damage, injustice and social harm often neglected by criminal law and by the criminal justice system. Through this approach, we will explore a situated environmental scenario: Huelva, a town in southern Spain, heavily polluted by a huge industrial and chemical plant established during the 1960s and built in close proximity to the town. We shall examine this case of environmental crime through a still unfolding criminological perspective, identifying the theoretical issues encountered and the methodological approaches to be taken when studying an ongoing case of conflict and of environmental crime. The ethnographic research I present also employs “photo-elicitation interviews” as a new source of qualitative data for criminology applied to the environmental field. It opens some “sensitizing” dimensions on socio-environmental conflict and environmental crime that may also prove useful when observing the “sensitive environments” of other realities.