Green Criminology Opposes Prison Growth/Mass Incarceration, Opposition to the Jewkes/Moran Hypothesis

• In Event: Causes and Consequences of Prison Population Growth

Abstract

Recently, Theoretical Criminology has published two different critiques of green criminology. Those critiques are based on misleading assumptions about and descriptions of green criminology, and in particular green criminology’s commitment to social justice concerns. In this article we specifically address Jewkes and Moran’s discussion of how green criminology could promote the expansion of mass incarceration. As we note, this issues has been previously discussed in the green criminological literature. That discussion specifically states that green criminological policies related to imprisonment favor reducing the size of the prison system. Moreover, to discuss this issue intelligently, it is necessary to refer to prior literature that has described the difference between green criminology’s definition of the term green and the social justice implications of that term, and what has been called the corporatist use and redefinition of the term “green” to enhance the sale of commodities. If prison officials are adopting green technology for the purpose of expanding imprisonment (and we doubt this is the case), this is no fault of green criminology, as Jewkes and Moran suggest, but is rather an outcome of the normal operation of the political economy of capitalism.

Authors

• Michael A. Long, Northumbria University

• Michael J. Lynch, University of South Florida

• Paul B. Stretesky, Northumbria University