The Urgency of a “Green Criminology”: A Case Study of Air Pollution, Criminal Activity and Environmental Perception in the South Durban Basin (South Africa)

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1    Introduction 
Criminal behavior has been studied 
for centuries. Scholars and experts from dis-
parate academic backgrounds have tried to 
“impose their own stamp on thinking” 
(Downes, Rock, & McLaughlin, 2016) on 
origins and reasons that lead on a person to 
commit a crime.  
Theories arise from the old biological ap-
proaches, which hypothesized that crimi-
nals could be identified by biological and 
physical traits, such as “small or malformed 
skull, pronounced and large jaw, a sloping 
forehead, and receding chins” (Rafter, 
2008), to new contemporary biological the-
ories to crime, which look at the biochemi-
cal conditions, neurophysiological dam-
ages, and genetic inheritance of the criminal 
(SCCJR, 2016).  
Rather, psychological theories vary: 
according to those, criminal behavior is due 
to individual reasons such as emotional dis-
turbance, clinical disorders, negative child-
hood development, and incomplete cogni-
tive maturation (Raine, 1993), while the 
wider sociological approaches consider 
criminal behavior as a result of social fac-
tors external to the individual, such as dis-
organized contexts, racial heterogeneity, 
absence of law enforcement, and relative 
deprivation (Miller, 2014). The latter sug-
gests the feelings of certain groups of peo-
ple who “see themselves unfairly disadvan-
taged compared to other individuals or 
groups” (SCCJR, 2016), leading to frustra-
tion and resentment.  
On the one hand, the lack of integra-
tion among the several theories mentioned 
above led every approach to a comprehen-
sive investigation of the analyzed object, 
even if from only one perspective. On the 
other hand, this unidirectional development 
did not allow completely either an amal-
gamation of ideas from the different aca-
demic fields, or an inclusion of new ele-
ments that could be responsible for criminal 
behavior, such as air pollution. 
 Even if the impact of air pollution 
has always been assessed through a health-
based risk evaluation as cancer, a recent and 
growing literature shows how air pollution 
affects negatively not only the worker 
productivity in physical jobs (Lavy et al., 
2014), or the cognitive performance in stu-
dents at school (Bharadwaj et al., 2014), but 
also air pollution could induce an aggres-
sive and violent human response. In fact, 
exposure to air pollution can affect people’s 
life, reactions, and feelings through an in-
crease of aggression, impulsiveness, irrita-
bility, and a decrease of self-control (Heyes 
& Saberian, 2015).
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Keeping in consideration earlier re-
search and theory about the impact of air 
pollution on crime, the aims of this study are 
to investigate the possible correlation be-
tween air pollution and criminal behavior, 
as well as to analyze the social perceptions 
and attitudes toward the risks of living in a 
highly polluted area.  
As the two tables below show, the 
studied area is the South Durban Industrial 
Basin (SDIB), the largest toxic hub of 
South Africa where petrochemical refiner-
ies, “numerous toxic waste landfill sites, an 
airport, a paper manufacturing plant, and a 
multiple of chemical process industries” 
(Peek, 2000) are responsible for an unac-
ceptable level of toxins emissions, affect-
ing negatively not only the surrounded en-
vironment but also the 280 000 people liv-
ing in the area (Ethekwini Population Cen-
sus, 2011).  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Table 1 – Map of Durban 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
           
                                    Table 2 – Map of South Durban Industrial Basin
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This mixed-methods study is di-
vided in two main parts: a quantitative and 
a qualitative research.    
The quantitative research investi-
gates the relationship of air pollution, in 
particular Sulphur dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen 
dioxide (NO2), and Particulate Matter 
(PM10 / PM2.5), with violent crimes. It is im-
portant to highlight that this research is an 
observational study. Therefore, it does not 
provide the probability of a causal relation-
ship between air pollution and criminal ac-
tivity. Rather, an observational study repre-
sents the starting point for further studies 
concerning the interesting correlation found 
in this investigation. 
The definition of violent crime is 
based on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report-
ing (UCR) Program, which considers vio-
lent crimes those crimes “against persons or 
property that intentionally threatens, at-
tempts, or actually inflicts physical harm” 
(FBI, 2010). For the purpose of this study, a 
violent crime is defined as murder, at-
tempted murder, sexual offences, common 
robbery, aggravated robbery, common as-
sault, aggravated assault, and arson. 
The crime data cover a period from 
2005 to 2013. The data are collected annu-
ally by the South Africa Police Service 
(SAPS) and they are reported by the South 
Africa crime statistics website.  The crime 
data refer to the following South Durban ar-
eas: Isipingo, Greater Merewent, Montclair-
Clairwood, and Brighton Beach. The choice 
of these residential areas is based on their 
proximity to the main toxic hotspots.   
The air pollution data cover the 
same period as the crime data, from 2005 to 
2013. The research results are built on a bi-
variate analysis of the two data sets. The air 
pollution data are obtained by the annual re-
ports provided by the eThekwini Munici-
pality, where the South Durban Basin is lo-
cated. Pollution is measured by twelve air 
monitoring stations, “designed by an expert 
team from the eThekwini Health Depart-
ment under the technical guidance of NILU, 
the Norwegian Institute for Air Research” 
(eThekwini Annual Report, 2005). The air 
stations are: Prospecton, Southern Works, 
Ganges School, Settlers School, Went-
worth, Jacobs, and Grosvenor School. The 
choice of these stations is based on their 
proximity to the crime areas analyzed, and 
therefore also with the toxic hotspots. 
 The qualitative research investigates 
the social perceptions and attitudes of peo-
ple affected by air pollution. How does air 
pollution affect people’s lives? How are 
their personal experiences shaped by living 
in a situation created by environmental in-
justice? How did the South Durban inhabit-
ants learn to live in such environmentally
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insulting reality? These questions are an-
swered interviewing a sample of 100 resi-
dents from the areas most affected by air 
pollution: Wentworth, Merebank East, 
Bluff, Isipingo, and Montclair-Clairwood.  
Other data sources include socio-
economic data of the studied areas obtained 
from the eThekwini Census of 2001 and 
2011, and from the “Social Impact Assess-
ment” of Sutherland et al. (2009). Moreo-
ver, meteorological data, especially wind 
direction, are used to explain the direction 
of air pollution towards certain residential 
areas. Meteorological information is re-
ported by the eThekwini Municipality an-
nual reports. 
 The layout of the rest of the paper is 
as follows. In Section 2, a theoretical frame-
work is provided. In Sections 3 and 4, the 
personal choice of coming to South Africa 
to study the South Durban Industrial Basin 
is explained. Section 5 presents detailed in-
formation about the data sources. Section 6 
provides an overview of both the quantita-
tive and qualitative methods, challenges and 
limitations. Section 7 describes the quanti-
tative study, results, and falsification. Sec-
tion 8 describes the qualitative study and re-
sults. Section 9 concludes.  
 It is essential to highlight an aspect 
which characterizes the whole study. The fi-
nal purpose of this research is not to claim 
that crime is caused only by the high pres-
ence of air pollution in certain areas. Rather, 
the aim is to try to integrate in further crim-
inological research other aspects not fully 
understood, which could be additional 
causes of criminal behavior.
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2    Theoretical Framework  
Crime has always been considered a 
consequence of psychological and social 
factors. 
How many times did we hear that a crime 
was committed by a person with a mental 
disorder? How many times did we discover 
that the perpetrator was under the influence 
of alcohol and/or drugs? How many times 
did we find out that a crime was consum-
mated due to unemployment reasons or per-
sonality disorders? 
As most of the studies show, crimi-
nal behavior is caused by an interaction of 
both sociological and psychological factors. 
I address here whether it would contribute 
to criminology theory to take also into con-
sideration environmental pollution as a so-
cial stressor leading to an increase of irrita-
bility and hence aggression. 
Section 2.1 outlines a recent subfield 
of criminology, called green criminology 
whose purpose is studying the relationship 
between natural environment and crime. 
Section 2.2 presents important concepts for 
both green criminology and this study, such 
as environmental crime, environmental vic-
timology, environmental justice, and envi-
ronmental racism. Section 2.3 provides sup-
port for this research, showing those studies 
that establish correlations between air pol-
lution and crime. 
Sections 2.1 and 2.2 address a ques-
tion that has been asked of me several times 
during this research: What is the relation-
ship between criminology and the physical 
environment?  
 
2.1   Green Criminology: The New Horizon? 
Green criminology is such a recent 
and still developing subject that, according 
to several scholars, the term “green crimi-
nology” itself represents both an umbrella 
category and an open framework, rather 
than an established theory. On the one hand, 
green criminology is an umbrella category 
because it is a system of “intellectual, em-
pirical and political orientations toward pri-
mary and secondary harms, offences and 
crime that impact in a damaging way on the 
natural environment, diverse species (hu-
man and non-human) and the planet” (South 
& Ruggiero, 2013). On the other hand, 
green criminology is an open framework in 
“involving an inter-and multi-disciplinary
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rendezvous point from disparate subjects, 
like political science, economics, psychol-
ogy, organization theory as well as conser-
vation and environmental sciences” (South 
& Ruggiero, 2013).  
Early engagements in the relation-
ship between natural environmental issues, 
victimization and crime can be traced in 
several studies (Rodríguez Goyes & South, 
2017). However, it was only in 1990 that 
Michael J. Lynch coined the concept of 
“green criminology”, “an entirely new per-
spective or orientation within criminology” 
(Lynch, 1990) with multiple themes and 
topics. For instance, “one could: study envi-
ronmental and wildlife laws and regula-
tions; investigate the social harms associate 
with chemical and pesticide manufacturing 
on a local or global scale; analyze interna-
tional treaties devoted to environmental 
protection; develop national and compara-
tive studies of environmental politics and 
power; investigate drug dumping in power-
less third-and fourth-world nations; expose 
unsafe working conditions and hazards cre-
ated by pesticides, both in the field and in 
the factory; reveal global political and eco-
nomic structures responsible for the expor-
tation of environmental hazards from indus-
trialized, core nations to the periphery; and 
ultimately tie all such studies to political, 
economic and class relationships that struc-
ture these outcomes” (Lynch, 1990).  
Therefore, this exhaustive statement 
suggests that green criminology is in a nut-
shell “the analysis of environmental harms 
from a criminological perspective, or the 
application of criminological thought to en-
vironmental issues” (Potter, 2012 cited in 
Cowburn et al., 2013).  
On the same path, in 1998, Nigel 
South proposed the development of a new 
“green perspective” in studying crimes, 
aiming to bring forth new criminological 
theories and practical suggestions related to 
those environmental challenges that our so-
ciety created. A society called metaphori-
cally by Ulrich Beck a “Risk society”, 
wherein uncontrollable risks, such as cli-
mate change, air pollution, nuclear waste, or 
financial crisis are affecting everyone, with-
out any spatial, temporal and social bound-
aries (Beck, 2002). Thus, a global intercon-
nection of people, systems and networks 
which is the basis for the “Butterfly effect”, 
meaning that “what happens in one part of 
the world will have an impact in another 
part.” (White, 2011).  
Unfortunately, although a matter of 
global importance, “crimes against the en-
vironment have by no means received full 
acknowledgement yet as a field of study in 
criminology” (South, 1998). It seems, in 
fact, that criminology is trying to avoid or 
escape from dealing with environmental is-
sues. Consequently, criminology needs to
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reconsider and rethink its own studied ob-
ject, breaking and overcoming the tradi-
tional concept of crime towards new para-
digms.  
This undefined situation raises sev-
eral questions. For instance, what are the 
implications of applying a green and eco-
logical imagination on crime? How can the 
traditional concept of crime be shaped by 
green criminology? How should people af-
fected by the destruction of their natural en-
vironment consider their plight? Which 
kind of justice should be involved in dealing 
with crimes against the physical environ-
ment? Further studies are required.  
 
 
 
2.2   The key concepts behind Green Criminology   
            
 2.2.1   Environmental Crime        
The core of green criminology is the 
study of environmental crimes, a new con-
cept different than traditional notions of 
crime. Environmental crimes do not refer to 
interpersonal violence or property crimes, 
but rather as “acts that breach environmen-
tal legislation and cause significant harm or 
risk to the environment and human health” 
(EFFACE, 2016). This definition, however, 
is ambiguous. Is an environmental crime 
more a “crime” or a harm? How can the two 
be distinguished? 
According to Lynch and Stretsky 
(2003), in order to better understand the 
meaning of environmental crime, it is nec-
essary to examine it under two different per-
spectives: corporate actors and environmen-
tal justice. 
From the corporate actors’ perspec-
tive, green crime is considered as “unau-
thorized acts or omissions that violate the 
law and are therefore subject to criminal 
prosecution and sanctions” (Lynch & 
Stretsky, 2003). This narrow and strict 
statement, however, has two main limita-
tions. Firstly, environmental crimes are not 
yet addressed fully by international legisla-
tion to prevent and prosecute them. There-
fore, not only are green crimes not consid-
ered a priority of the governments, but also 
what is criminal in one country may be legal 
in another. This is the case, for instance, of 
the relocation of industries from First-
World countries into Third-World coun-
tries, wherein not only there is a strong lack 
of control and law enforcement, but also