Slavomir Redo, Visiting Lecturer of the Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology, University of Vienna made a presentation linking Environmental justice, crime prevention and intergenerational learning on the second day of the Big Foot conference

1. Environmental Justice, Crime
Prevention and Intergenerational
Learning
Dr. jur. habil. Sławomir REDO
Law Faculty, Institute for Criminal Law
and Criminology, University of
Vienna, Austria

2. What is Environmental Justice?
Academic definition*:
First, it describes a social movement whose focus is on the fair distribution of environmental benefits
and burdens.
Second, it is an interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes (but is not limited to)
theories of the environment, theories of justice, environmental law and governance, environmental
policy and planning, development, sustainability, and political ecology*
Policy-relevant definition:
The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines Environmental Justice as "the fair treatment
and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, or income with
respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and
policies."
*Schlosberg, David. (2007) Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature. Oxford
University Press
Miller, Jr., G. Tyler (2003). Environmental Science: Working With the Earth (9th ed.). Pacific
Grove, California: Brooks/Cole. p. G5

3. Both definitions undersempesize the
intergererational effect of
Environmental Justice
"No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes
that continue to evolve over a lifetime. A society that cuts off from its youth severs its
lifeline”, Kofi Annan.

4. Argument:
In the interest of broader practical and theoretical pursuit of the
concept of sustainable development, one may argue that security, the
rule of law, the administration of criminal justice administration, and
crime prevention should be treated as renewable resources. Their
vital energy is social energy. That energy is not only produced by each
generation for its own use, but should also be transmitted
intergenerationally. Intergenerational transmission of cultural
patterns of behaviour, whether positive or negative (crime and
violence), is a part of the question of social, people-centred
sustainable development and the energy it releases that should drive
crime prevention, as emphasized in its own way by the UN Guidelines
for the Prevention of Crime (2002).

5. Crossing generations, crossing mountains, but
also crossing disciplines, minds and making
alliance of civilizations

6. Intergenerational transmission of
values and learning is not only for
the poetics of environmental
protection and dialogue of
civilizations
but also for a practical building of
the resilence to criminal motivation

8. On the basis of the study of conduct norms by
the tribes in India (the offspring of Central Asian
Moghuls which appeared in the 16th
century), Thorsten Sellin in his article on the
conflict of cultures (1938) concluded that killing
a member of own tribe or stealing from him
was a “crime”, but doing that to others was a
virtue, hence “conflict of cultures” in which a
group instils the double standards which its
members apply.
It is „natural for the Chinaman to gamble as for

9. Criminal traditions are passed
from one generation to
another. („Birds of a feather
flock together”)

10. The follow-up research by Edwin H. Sutherland (Sellin’s friend) has led him to conclude that
e.g. „Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of
communication”;
and others to test and confirm statistically this and other precepts of „differential
association theory”. It serves now also as the basis for practitioners involved in the
„unlearning criminal behaviour”

11. From differential association to reflexive reformation:
11
Induce crimnals to join
noncriminals to share
the noncriminal values
Make a
reformation goal
relevant to the
interest of
criminals
Inscribe yourself into
the group by accepting
its ranks and status
Instill a genuine
„we” feeling as
„one of them” to
achieve cohesion
CRIMINALS
Induce crimnals
to join
noncriminals to
share the
noncriminal
values
Favourable to law violation
TRADITIONS
Unfavourableto law violation
Learning
techniques and
rationalizations
Excess of
definitions
favourable to law
violation
Intimate contact
with delinquent
associates
CRIME
Favourable to
law violation
TRADITIONS
Unfavourable to
law violation
Source: Chris Uggen & Sławomir Redo
DA
RR

12. The British initiated the Criminal Tribes Act in 1871, referring to around
150 tribes for their so-called “criminal tendencies,” giving the police wide
powers to arrest them, control, and monitor their movements. The law in
effect was that anyone born into one of the tribes, under this act, was
seen as a criminal.

13. Typical criminal tribes’ activities: gang-related (as members
of private armies); frisking of the audience while the tribe’s
women perform dance; road and train robberies, duping
poor farmers by playing a cop or a priest; stealing livestock;
forcing a women of own tribe into prostitution, while a
master disguised as fakir enters the act, beats and robbs a
customer, etc.

14. A member of own tribe may become “other” if he/she brings “dishonour”
Human Rights Watch defines "honor killings“ in own group as follows:
Honor killings are acts of vengeance, usually death, committed by male family members
against female family members, who are held to have brought dishonor upon the family. A
woman can be targeted by her family for a variety of reasons, including: refusing to enter
into an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce—even
from an abusive husband—or (allegedly) committing adultery. The mere perception that a
woman has behaved in a way that "dishonors" her family is sufficient to trigger an attack
on her life*.
Men can also be the victims of honor killings by members of the family of a woman with
whom they are perceived to have an inappropriate relationship** The loose term "honor
killing" applies to killing of both men and women in cultures that practice it***.
*Violence Against Women and "Honor" Crimes". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 2001-04-06.
** Afghan couple stoned to death – Central & South Asia. Al Jazeera English (2010-08-16). Retrieved on 2011-10-01.
***Teen Lovers killed in India Honor Killing. LiveLeak.com

15. When Soviet law was extended to Siberia, similar effects were observed. Women
amongt he Siberian tribes, who in obedience to the law, laid aside their veils were
killed by their relatives for violating one of the most sacred norms of their tribes.

16. In 1930s there were about 4 million of „criminal tribes” members for 300
million India’s population (~1,3%). Now there are about 60 million for 1
billion population (~1,6%).
Since India’s independence (1947) there has been a progress in allevating
the poverty of those tribes, but not without criticism of civil community
(„racial profiling” ).

17. After the British rule, India, criticized for discriminatory classification of
nomadic and semi-nomadic „criminal tribes”, repealed in law their respective
classification as „hereditary criminals” and „habitual offenders”.

18. „The social category generally known as the Denotified and Nomadic
Tribes (DNTs) of India covers a population approximately of 60 million.
Some of them are now included in the list of Scheduled castes, some
others in the Scheduled Tribes, and quite a few in Other Backward
Classes. …What is common to all these DNTs is the fate of being
branded as 'born’ criminals.”

19. If we agree that we do not still exactly know where and how social networks cross
with human biological processes and it is very difficult to alter the personal
dispositions of offenders, would this not then be a reason to seek to modify their
behaviour by changing the social/cultural and situational risk factors related to
how they act, and their perceptions of those factors, especially at the early
development stage?
How can one better motivate communities than by assisting them in developing
and pursuing legitimate ownership of certain crime prevention activities, and by
encouraging them to increase their own resilience, so this can create a better
quality of life and investment climate for future prosperity? If communities fail,
who else can succeed?
How can we identify in culture essential components that feed criminogenic
injustice (unfairness/inequality), separate them from popular beliefs and religion,
so a baby can drink untainted mother’s milk and learn more emphatically about
the otherness?

21. There is ethnographic strong evidence that Justice (Fairness/Equality) is the one, basic
and cross cutting component that may be identified as a driver for cross disciplinary
intergenerational education and training.
But it needs a developmental approach (technical assistance), so the local sense of
Justice may be advanced to meet the UN sense of „Justice”, because
„No one is born a good citizen; no
nation is born a democracy”.