Carole Gibbs

Lead Exposure and Its Implications for Criminological Theory

This article summarizes what is known about the association between lead exposure and human behavior and discusses the implications for criminology. It provides background information about lead sources and measurement and traces the various impacts of lead exposure on humans, including cognition and behavior. It posits that the link between lead exposure, aggression, delinquency, and crime is consistent with the traditional individual-level psychological based and aggregate-level sociological based theories that explain delinquent and criminal behavior and that differential lead exposure and treatment by neighborhood is congruent with theories of social disadvantage. It concludes by enumerating the unsettled debates about the impact of lead exposure and by outlining the profitable avenues for future criminological research.

Intelligence-led policing and transnational environmental crime: A process evaluation

Transnational environmental crime (TEC) threatens human health and the natural environment. Its complexity also poses a challenge for regulation and enforcement. In the current paper, we present a process evaluation of one attempt to use innovations in policing to improve TEC enforcement. Specifically, we assess the implementation of intelligence-led policing (ILP) in the Environment Agency’s Securing Compliant Waste Exports Project. We find that the team was able to fully implement the UK National Intelligence Model to address illegal exports of hazardous waste, including combining regulatory and enforcement data to generate actionable intelligence. Future research should examine the implementation of ILP in other contexts and to address other forms of TEC to evaluate the generalizability of these results.

A Routine Activities Analysis of White‐Collar Crime in Carbon Markets

Scholars recently called for increased analysis of opportunity structures that produce white‐collar crimes in legitimate business systems. In the current research, we use mental models, a tool from cognitive psychology, to describe opportunity structures for white‐collar crime in the European Emissions Trading System, the largest carbon market in the world. Specifically, we use routine activities theory to describe the convergence of motivated offenders and suitable targets in the absence of capable guardians in different parts of the system. Implications for utilizing routine activities theory to understand and address crime in carbon markets are discussed.

Conservation criminology and the global trade in electronic waste: Applying a multi-disciplinary research framework

The global trade in electronic waste destined for recycling, disposal or reuse (E-waste) poses a significant risk to human health and the natural environment from improper recycling and disposal. However, in part due to the lack of regulatory attention, few empirical studies of this issue exist. In this paper, we fill this knowledge gap by applying a conservation criminology framework to E-waste. Specifically, we draw on criminology and criminal justice, natural-resources management, and risk and decision sciences to describe the nature of the trade, relevant stakeholders, and current interventions. Our initial step is to develop a more holistic picture of E-waste and identify knowledge gaps for future research, working toward building theoretical explanations necessary for effective policy development. Through this work, we hope to demonstrate the importance of, and the steps involved in, using this multi-disciplinary framework to examine and address complex environmental and social problems.

Environmental Regulation and Enforcement: Structures, Processes and the Use of Data for Fraud Detection

Several major environmental programmes require regulated entities to measure and self-report pollutant levels to state regulatory agencies. This data is used to assess compliance, but critics suggest that it could be used more effectively to detect fraud in self-reports, a criminal offense. Efforts to develop and implement fraud detection tools are restricted by a lack of knowledge regarding how regulatory and enforcement systems operate in regulatory agencies and whether/how data is used, particularly for fraud detection. To address this gap in knowledge, we conducted a case study of these issues in one state environmental agency. We triangulate interview, focus group and observational data to describe the current system and assess points in the system in which data is being used. We draw upon organisational learning theory to suggest the ways to use data more effectively in the future, particularly to improve fraud detection.

Applicability of Benford’s Law to Compliance Assessment of Self-Reported Wastewater Treatment Plant Discharge Data

The United States (U.S.) environmental regulatory system relies heavily on self-reports to assess compliance among regulated facilities. However, the regulatory agencies have expressed concerns regarding the potential for fraud in self-reports and suggested that the likelihood of detection in the federal and state enforcement processes is low. In this paper, we apply Benford’s Law to three years of self-reported discharge parameters from wastewater treatment plant facilities in one U.S. state. We conclude that Benford’s Law alone may not be a reliable method for detecting potential data mishandling for individual facility–parameter combinations, but may provide information about the types of parameters most likely to be fraudulently reported and types of facilities most likely to do so. From a regulatory perspective, this information may help to prioritise potential fraud risks in self reporting and better direct limited resources.

Applying a conservation-criminology framework to common-pool natural-resource issues

Protection and management of common-pool natural resources are an international focus of government agencies and nongovernmental organizations. There is concern that an emphasis on protection has inadvertently led to the disenfranchisement of local stakeholders by prohibiting access to natural resources that they have traditionally relied upon. Management of these resources by state actors without local input has exacerbated the social and economic marginalization of poor and/or minority populations, leading to traditional interactions with natural resources being labeled as deviant or criminal. The complex nature of this issue, which lies at the nexus of natural-resource management, criminology and risk, makes it difficult to explore using a disciplinary view. The theoretical concept of conservation criminology is well suited to serve as a framework for this wicked problem. We examine the strain between resource management, environmental protection and local stakeholders’ rights via a case study (Abalone fishery in South Africa) using conservation criminology as a theoretical structure.

Integrating Criminological and Decision Research Theory: Implications for Understanding and Addressing Crime in Marginalized Communities

ABSTRACT Minority groups are significantly overrepresented in crime. Theories of racial differences in crime developed using two separate and distinct approaches that highlight either increased exposure to criminogenic factors at the individual level or greater risk of crime due to disadvantaged neighborhood conditions. Neighborhood theories describe how structural disadvantage disrupts neighborhood social processes and produces oppositional street cultures. In the article, we advance theorizing on race and crime by linking the neighborhood experience to individual-level decision making via new conceptualizations of culture. Rather than a “values as goals” view of culture, culture may include a “tool kit” of ways to solve problems and this cultural toolkit may, in turn, influence how an individual makes decisions. Specifically, culturally learned toolkits may increase flaws in the decision process (e.g., fast and intuitive rather than deliberate decision processes, the use of decision heuristics) to produce more crime, which would explain the association between race and crime. We integrate this conceptualization of culture and these flaws in the decision-making process into rational choice theory at the individual level and describe how they may be exacerbated in disadvantaged neighborhood contexts. Implications for understanding race and crime and directions for future research are discussed.