Until recently, mainstream law-based policing and criminal justice, as well as traditional criminology, have paid relatively little attention to crimes and destructive acts affecting the environment, and to the human and non-human victims of such events. Acts of corporate pollution and trafficking in endangered species have attracted some attention but in general these have not been priorities. Over the past few decades, awareness of the financial as well as human costs of environmental damage has increased and this has registered with some who are not otherwise environmentally ‘green’. A new field of ‘green’ or ‘conservation’ or ‘eco-’ criminology, alongside allied work on environmental justice and victimization, is not represented by a substantial literature. Simply put, this kind of perspective argues that a wide range of actions imperil the planet as well as the future of humanity and other species, and these crimes and harms need to be recognized and responded to. In the world of regulation and law enforcement the problems posed by environmental crimes and harms call for us to do familiar things better and more innovatively, and for new ways of doing things urgently and collaboratively - but at the same time, new challenges also reinforce the wisdom of some old messages – in this case that ‘prevention is better than cure’.

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Much of traditional criminology is anthropocentric (human - centered), as theories and research focus on humans both as perpetrators of criminal actions as well as victims of crime. In contrast, green criminology broadens the view to include the environment (water, land, air, and plants) as well as non-human animals, including wild, farmed, and domestic animals. Green criminology moves away from a strictly anthropocentric perspective to a more encompassing view of who could be a victim of crime or harm.