Green Criminology and Social Justice: A Reexamination of the Lynemouth Plant Closing and the Political Economic Causes of Environmental and Social Injustice

Abstract

Pamela Ann Davies argues that the closure of the Lynemouth, UK, aluminum smelter generated adverse social justice impacts and was caused by the adoption of green state policies. She employs that argument to critique green criminology for promoting adverse social justice impacts. Here, we reanalyze the Lynemouth plant closure. First, this reanalysis illustrates the various social and environmental forms of injustice the plant generated, especially its adverse human, nonhuman and ecological health consequences. Second, the closure is reassessed from a political economic perspective that places the plant closure within the context of global capitalist plant closures in the aluminum industry. That review notes that plant closures and deindustrialization in developed economies are now a common occurrence driven by economic concerns, not environmental policies. We point out that social injustice as well as ecological destruction are often created by the normal operation of capitalism, and that those consequences should not be overlooked.