Environmental Criminology: Volume 20

Injustice is perceived, experienced and articulated. Social movements, and their constitutive parts, frame and re-frame these senses of injustice. Two often-overlapping accounts of social movements are in focus in this chapter. Human geography has been flooded with movement-based analyses of environmental justice (EJ). Sociology (more appropriately political sociology) has provided insight into social movements in the form of ‘contentious politics’ (CP). Building on both sets of literature, this chapter seeks to advance thought in human geography through a detailed exploration of master and collective action framing. It argues, firstly, that framing analysis challenges activist researchers to retain ‘spatial constructs’ as their central focus, rather than discourse. It calls, secondly, for us to unbind injustice as much as justice in our analysis of framing. And lastly, it demands a multi-spatial perspective on framing beyond simply scalar accounts.

This chapter will examine ideological debates currently taking place in academics. Anthropologists – and all academic workers – are at a crossroads. They must determine what it means to “green the academy” in an era of permanent war, “green capitalism,” and the neoliberal university (Sullivan, 2010). As Victor Wallis makes clear, “no serious observer now denies the severity of the environmental crisis, but it is still not widely recognized as a capitalist crisis, that is, as a crisis arising from and perpetuated by the rule of capital, and hence incapable of resolution within the capitalist framework.”

This chapter will report on the issues that surround the coverage of police shootings in the United States. It will also look at the issue of race and policing. In particular, the events at Ferguson, St. Louis in August 2014 and other controversial incidents will be explored. The chapter will utilize theories of policing, employ a media analysis, and develop an issue history to explain the background to problems with policing in African-American neighborhoods over many decades, culminating in the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

There were 374 mass shootings in the United States between 2013 and 2014 and they were not random occurrences. We expanded the FBI’s definition of mass shootings (four or more injured or killed, not including the shooter), and collected data on every mass shooting that occurred in the United States to observe geographical patterns. Social Disorganization theories state that violence will occur in areas with high levels of poverty, large population density, and little economic opportunity. These theories work well with strain theory, which suggests that blocked goals, the introduction of a negative stimulus, or the removal of a positive stimulus leads to negative emotions, and these emotions can lead to crime in order to resolve the strain felt. From under this framework, we discover with point pattern analysis that there are patterns in the location of mass shootings crime scenes. They are not random. These crimes were far more likely to occur in the South, the Upper Midwest, and in Southern California, while they were considerably less likely to occur in the Pacific Northwest, Upper Midwest, or the Northeast. The lack of random spatial pattern indicates that the structural factors that contribute to mass shootings are more prevalent in certain areas of the United States than in others.

This is a demographical exploration of a wide variety of topics, which are as follows: gender, race, age, employment, substance abuse, mental illness, physical illness, veteran status, government assistance, physical & sexual abuse, hunger, and space. All of these topics were explored in conjuncture to ascertain who the homeless are. To explore this topic, data from LAHSA (Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority) was utilized to calculate demographical aspects of the homeless population with a raw sample of 4,852. I coded this data to further find insight among the population. Throughout this study it was found that nearly 60% of the homeless population in Los Angeles County are unemployed, 50% of the population have been incarcerated, a third of the population is homeless by age 20, a quarter of the population are women, and a third don’t utilize government assistance programs.

Sexual crime in the Irish Free State was more than an issue of law, it carried ideological importance in a nation that legitimised itself as a beacon of Celtic Catholicism whilst struggling to maintain credibility in a contested post-colonial landscape. The nation’s police force, An Garda Síochána, had a central role in preserving the nation’s reputation for piety. This chapter explores the views of two of An Garda Síochána’s most senior officers regarding female sexuality and sexual crime; features that were to influence the level of protection and justice Ireland’s women and children were afforded under law.

This chapter sets out to examine the topic of a spatial analysis of urban crime through an analysis of David Simon’s seminal television series The Wire. By developing an analysis of the issues that are presented in the series, issues such as race, ethnicity and representation will be addressed in order to add to the understanding of these topics in relation to race and media representations. Each section will address a set of themes which are evident in The Wire. The chapter highlights the idea of race in the series and how characters are presented on screen. The research is also concerned with economic issues depicted in the series and the effect of the economy on the characters in Baltimore, the U.S. city in which The Wire was set.

The conclusion of the chapter addresses poverty class and inequality as topics and sets out to document these themes in relation to race. The third chapter also discusses the racism and discrimination that is apparent in The Wire. By contextualising the series, the book is attempting to theorise relevant issues surrounding race, gender and power through an examination of relevant literature and the development of a theoretical framework from which key issues will be addressed.

This chapter will develop a comprehensive review of methamphetamine usage with a concentration on North America. To develop a wider understanding of the use of this drug, this chapter will examine the history and spatial component of methamphetamine. In order to achieve this, the research will review previous literature, which includes the pattern of its original manufacture in the United States to international locations such as Mexico. The research data will include two interviews with individuals involved in the underworld of meth use in Los Angeles. The chapter will then present outcomes based on the participant survey and secondary sources.