Expanding the Scope of Non-speciesist Green Criminology: An Eco-Justice Perspective on Human-Invertebrate Relations

Green criminologists champion two key ideas. First, following the work of zemiologists, they recognise that criminology as a discipline should be concerned with both legal, and illegal, harms. Second, perhaps more radically, the scope of harm is broadened to include harms to humans (present and future), harms to non-human animals, and harms to the environment. A non-speciesist green criminology, therefore, recognises that non-humans can also be victims of crime. In this chapter it is argued that a non-speciesist approach should be extended to consider the harms that are inflicted on those organisms that make up the vast majority of animal life: invertebrates. Using White’sWhite, Rob (2013) eco-justice perspective as a framework for considering these harms, an Invertebrate Justice Model is outlined that recognises the various direct, and indirect, harms that arise from our interactions with invertebrate species and how these affect individual invertebrates (species justice), present and future humans (environmental justice), and the wider environment (ecological justice).