Illegal waste management activity and guardian scripting

• In Event: WG-PLACE 1: Crime Scripting

Abstract

A rather new development in the crime scripting literature is Leclerc and Reynald’s (2017) indication that using the script tool to unpack the actions of actors that participate in crime events other than offenders would be a desirable next step in the evolution of CSA (see also Leclerc 2014; 2017). Given the roots of CSA in environmental criminology, these actors are, most frequently, victims and guardians as they are conceptualized in routine activity theory, specifically in the crime triangle devised by Felson (1986). This contribution welcomes and builds on the suggestion that the script tool should be applied to the interventions of guardians. It expands on the indications made by Leclerc and Reynald in 2017 in three ways: first, the guardian script devised here draws on data of police authorities whereas Leclerc and Reynald had initially scripted a by-stander’s intervention (however, police have already been scripted in Blais and Leclerc (2023) and Sytsma et al. (2021). Second, the type of criminal activity that is being intervened upon is fraud as part of routinised, corporate environmental crimes. The original proposal centered on a mugging. Third, the guardian script is the second in a two-stage analysis of a single crime phenomenon. The offender perspective is gaged by applying CSA in the first stage. In fact, two sets of findings will be shared: the first set is yielded from a more “traditional” application of CSA to two crime events involving fraudulent handling of waste oils. The second set is about a police team, which investigated those crime events. The guardian script also dissects the police’s involvement (in collaboration with other state authorities) in systematic monitoring and enforcement activities in the industrial sectors in the context of which the crime events took place.

Authors

• Giulia Giardi, Maastricht University

• Kim Geurtjens, Avans University of Applied Sciences