Approaching behaviour that produces environmental harm through the medium of criminal sanctions (largely involving monetary penalties) has been criticised consistently as failing to prevent environmental crimes and harms, and failing to concurrently reduce environmental re-offending. Furthermore, important state-corporate political and economic relationships exist that ensure the continuation of environmental degradation. We suggest that a way to overcome this is to re-work the current legal system to one grounded in Earth jurisprudence. Although we realise that state-corporate relationships would likely prevent the implementation of Earth jurisprudential principles, we argue such principles are essential to up-end the prioritisation of economic imperatives over ecological values within capitalist societies. To demonstrate the strength and utility of the Earth jurisprudential approach, we use the case of fracking for shale gas in the United Kingdom to examine how Earth jurisprudential principles could prevent environmental harm from occurring.

Conflict between police, private security and political protesters is a topic that has been researched widely in criminology and other disciplines (e.g., Choudry 2019; Gilmore et al. 2019; Goyes and South 2017; Jackson et al. 2018; Rigakos 2002; South 1988; Weiss 1978). Adopting a green criminological lens, this article seeks to contribute to this rich body of research by examining police and private security responses to campaigning against opencast (open-pit) coal mining in Pont Valley, County Durham, United Kingdom (UK). Based on qualitative interviews, the article examines activists’ perceptions of responses to their campaign. Our findings reveal that rather than acting as neutral arbiters, police colluded with private interests, overlooking the abusive behavior of private security and bailiffs, particularly during the eviction of a protest camp at the proposed mining site. Activists believed that their right to protest was not respected, that their safety was jeopardized, and that police had willfully ignored a wildlife crime perpetrated by the mining company in order to enable mining to go ahead. Our article argues that the Pont Valley case fits into a wider pattern of repression of environmentalism in the UK, supporting Gilmore and colleagues’ (2019) argument that a progressive transformation in policing has been overstated.

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