This innovative Handbook provides a comprehensive treatment of the complex relationship between inequality and the environment and illustrates the myriad ways in which they intersect. Featuring over 30 contributions from leading experts in the field, it explores the ways in which inequality impacts three of the most pressing contemporary environmental issues: climate change, natural resource extraction, and food insecurity. Laying the conceptual foundations for its analysis of key inequality–environment intersections, the Handbook covers theoretical traditions employed in the environmental inequality literature and examines different approaches to the concept of rights and how these influence scholarship on environmental justice. Chapters further investigate the multifaceted relationships between the natural environment and common forms of social inequalities, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social class, the economy, and the state. Bringing together cutting-edge research on diverse inequality–environment intersections, this comprehensive Handbook will be relevant to both students and researchers in the social sciences and environmental sociology, politics, and geography. Its empirical insights will also prove valuable to public and social policymakers with access to mechanisms that can shape environmental protection policies.

Benford's Law is a probability distribution for the likelihood of the leading digit in a set of numbers. This book seeks to improve and systematize the use of Benford's Law in the social sciences to assess the validity of self-reported data. The authors first introduce a new measure of conformity to the Benford distribution that is created using permutation statistical methods and employs the concept of statistical agreement. In a switch from a typical Benford application, this book moves away from using Benford's Law to test whether the data conform to the Benford distribution, to using it to draw conclusions about the validity of the data. The concept of 'Benford validity' is developed, which indicates whether a dataset is valid based on comparisons with the Benford distribution and, in relation to this, diagnostic procedure that assesses the impact of not having Benford validity on data analysis is devised.

This timely and much-needed book focuses on the phenomenon often referred to as "holiday hunger" in the United Kingdom. The book begins by outlining the history and scope of holiday hunger - the condition that occurs when a child's household is, or will become, food insecure during the summer holidays. The decline of the UK welfare state and the rise of neoliberalism have created a situation where up to three million children in the UK face food insecurity during the summer months when there are extra financial pressures on the working poor and when free school meals are not available. This book details the level of childhood and household food insecurity in the UK and describes one of the main responses to holiday hunger - holiday clubs. These clubs are locally organised and funded and provide a place for children to go to eat nutritious meals for free during the school holidays. Highlighting the benefits of holiday clubs that often extend beyond food provision, this book also discusses the challenges that they face now and in the future. The book concludes with recommendations for food insecurity policy and the role of government in fighting holiday hunger. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of food and nutrition security, social policy and public health.

This book offers an alternative analysis of the various theories and dimensions of green and environmental justice which are rooted in political economy. Much green criminological literature sidelines political economic theoretical insights and therefore with this work the authors enrich the field by vigorously exploring such perspectives. It engages with a number of studies relevant to a political economic approach to justice in order to make two key arguments: that capitalism has produced profound ecological injustices and that the concept of ecological justice (human and ecological rights) itself needs critiquing. Green Criminology and Green Theories of Justice is a timely text which urges the field to revisit its radical roots in social justice while broadening its disciplinary horizons to include a meaningful analysis of political economy and its role in producing and responding to environmental harm and injustice.

Few criminologists have drawn attention to the fact that widespread and significant forms of harm such as green or environmental crimes are neglected by criminology. Others have suggested that green crimes present the most important challenge to criminology as a discipline. This book argues that criminology needs to take green harms more seriously and to be revolutionized so that it forms part of the solution to the large environmental problems currently faced across the world. It asks how criminology should be redesigned to consider green/environmental harm as a key area of study in an era where destruction of the earth and the world's ecosystem is a major concern and examines why this has remained unaccomplished so far. The chapters in this book apply an environmental frame of reference underlying a green approach to issues which can be addressed from within criminology and which can encourage criminologists and environmentalists to respond and react differently to environmental crime.

Benford's Law is a probability distribution for the likelihood of the leading digit in a set of numbers. This book seeks to improve and systematize the use of Benford's Law in the social sciences to assess the validity of self-reported data. The authors first introduce a new measure of conformity to the Benford distribution that is created using permutation statistical methods and employs the concept of statistical agreement. In a switch from a typical Benford application, this book moves away from using Benford's Law to test whether the data conform to the Benford distribution, to using it to draw conclusions about the validity of the data. The concept of 'Benford validity' is developed, which indicates whether a dataset is valid based on comparisons with the Benford distribution and, in relation to this, diagnostic procedure that assesses the impact of not having Benford validity on data analysis is devised.

This book offers an alternative analysis of the various theories and dimensions of green and environmental justice which are rooted in political economy. Much green criminological literature sidelines political economic theoretical insights and therefore with this work the authors enrich the field by vigorously exploring such perspectives. It engages with a number of studies relevant to a political economic approach to justice in order to make two key arguments: that capitalism has produced profound ecological injustices and that the concept of ecological justice (human and ecological rights) itself needs critiquing. Green Criminology and Green Theories of Justice is a timely text which urges the field to revisit its radical roots in social justice while broadening its disciplinary horizons to include a meaningful analysis of political economy and its role in producing and responding to environmental harm and injustice.

This groundbreaking text provides an overview and assessment of green criminology as well as a call to action. Green Criminology draws attention to the ways in which the political-economic organization of capitalism causes ecological destruction and disorganization. Focusing on real-world issues of green crime and justice, chapters include political-economic examinations of ecological withdrawals, ecological additions, toxic towns, wildlife poaching and trafficking, environmental justice, environmental laws, and nongovernment environmental organizations. The book also presents an unintimidating introduction to research from the physical sciences on issues such as climate change, pollution levels, and the ecological footprint of humans, providing a truly interdisciplinary foundation for green criminological analysis. To help students succeed in the course-and to encourage them to see themselves as future green criminology researchers-end-of-chapter materials include: *Questions and Activities for Students that review topics students should be able to conceptualize and address*Lessons for Researchers that provide ideas about additional research that might be worthwhile to undertake

The essays selected for this volume show how radical and Marxist criminology has established itself as an influential critique since it emerged in the late 1960s. Unlike orthodox criminology which emphasizes individual level explanations of criminal behavior, radical and Marxist criminology emphasizes power inequality and structures, especially those related to class, as key factors in crime, law and justice. This collection of essays draws attention to the way in which structural forces shape and influence both individual and institutional (for example, governmental) behavior; highlights neglected crime (corporate, governmental, state-corporate and environmental) which causes more extensive damage than the street crimes examined by orthodox criminology; and discusses the ways in which law and criminal justice processes reinforce power structures and contribute to class control.