About Conservation Criminology

Conservation criminology is an approach to research, teaching and outreach based on a framework currently under development at MSU. Rather than a singular definition of conservation criminology or its scope we provide a theoretical framework for building generalizable knowledge on environmental crimes and risks by a process of inductive reasoning We believe it is important to focus on narrowly defined problems to advance theoretical understanding and inform policy decisions while also assessing similarities and differences across problems to build more general knowledge. The strength of this theoretical framework comes from its core disciplines and scope.

Each of the core disciplines provides unique yet complementary tools to the conservation criminology framework. Criminology offers an analysis of criminal actors (e.g., people and companies) ad legal interventions. Natural resource disciplines contribute knowledge and systematic tools and methods to measure, manage and conserve natural resources ecosystems and the people that interact with them. Complementing criminology and natural resource management, risk and decision sciences offer scientific risk assessment and tools to understand risk perception and decision-making. The integration of these three disciplines will potentially lead to the development of unique theories and methods to address environmental crimes and risk.

Conservation criminology offers a broad research scope. Environmental activities that are currently defined as crimes or illegal activities (i.e., violations of civil or regulatory law) clearly fall within the scope of conservation criminology. Furthermore, issues arising from public perceptions of risk may also benefit from a conservation criminology framework. Assessing, managing and developing risk communication strategies (intended to influence citizen or corporate behavior) through deliberative processes that include scientific analysis and stakeholder concern fall within the scholarly domain of risk. However, if scientific assessment and stakeholder concern create a serious consideration of systems to regulate the issue, it will fall within the scope of conservation criminology.

Currently the conservation criminology framework is being used by a group of scholars at MSU to inform the development of classes, research projects and outreach activities:

• The framework provides a theoretical foundation for a set of three online courses that comprise a Master’s level certificate program.
• A variety of research projects on pollution and wildlife issues that use a conservation criminology approach are being conducted or are in the development phase.
• There is also an ongoing dialog between MSU scholars and various state and federal agencies to determine how the framework can best used and informed by practitioners.