Michael J Lynch
Biographic Data
| ID | 136097 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael J Lynch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael J |
| FAMILY NAME | Lynch |
| SIGNATURE | LYNCH M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Florida |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3569-4749 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 228 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Drinking Water Injustice: Racial Disparity in Regulatory Enforcement of Safe Drinking Water Act Violations
This study assessed regulatory enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) within the political-economic context that examined the impacts of community characteristics on length of time a water system remains in noncompliance with SDWA regulations. Our findings indicate that noncompliant water systems in counties with higher proportion of both Black and Hispanic residents take longer to be returned to compliance with the SDWA. Conversely, w…
Blood, Powder, and Residue: How Crime Labs Translate Evidence into Proof
Mapping Homicide Clusters across the United States Using County Level Data, 2004-2012 with Comparisons to Earlier Studies
Mapping crime can help identify geographic areas where crime clusters, and potentially help reveal factors that affect the production of crime at the structural level. Such information could have useful policy purposes. This study examines county-level homicide clusters in the US (2004–2012), and compares them to results from prior studies. The analysis employs SaTScanTM covariate adjustments based on epidemiological mapping algorithms used in di…
Climate Change, Temperature, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities, 1895–2015
It has been argued that the temperature increase caused by anthropogenic climate change will produce a significant increase in violent crime. Support for that prediction is often based on statistical analyses of seasonal temperature and crime data cycles across days, months, and quarters and sometimes on large geographic areas. Within-year temperature changes are very large, however, relative to the 30-yr temperature increases employed to measure…
The Treadmill of Production and the Treadmill of Law: Propositions for Analyzing Law, Ecological Disorganization and Crime
Treadmill of production (ToP) arguments have significant implications for the study of environmental crime. A current limitation of those arguments involves their application to environmental law and its enforcement. We argue that a treadmill of law (ToL) shapes and maintains production through lawmaking and enforcement practices, issues that have yet to receive significant attention in the ToP literature. To illustrate the connection between the…
Big Prisons, Big Dreams: Crime and the Failure of America's Penal System
The American prison system has grown tenfold since the 1970s, but crime rates in the United States have not decreased. This doesn't surprise Michael J. Lynch, a critical criminologist, who argues that our oversized prison system is a product of our consumer culture, the public's inaccurate beliefs about controlling crime, and the government's criminalizing of the poor. While deterrence and incapacitation theories suggest that imprisoning more cri…
Environmental crime prosecutions in Ireland, 2004–2014
Despite increased interest in environmental crime and green criminology, few studies address the use of criminal penalties in response to environmental crimes. A handful of published examples employ data from the United States or the Flanders court system, and little is known about how other nations punish environmental violations. Addressing this issue, the current study examined the use of criminal environmental penalties in Ireland from 2004 t…
Exploring the Relationship between Neoliberalism and Homicide: A Cross-National Perspective
Research has shown that neoliberal economic policies may increase violence. In this study we extend this logic to create a “neoliberalism-homicide hypothesis.” We test this hypothesis using two global measures of neoliberalism (the Economic Freedom of the World Index and the Index of Economic Freedom) and 2014 homicide rates for 142 nations. Regression analysis provides little support for the neoliberalism-homicide hypothesis using the global ind…
Noxious Chemical Exposure Trends as Measures of Green Victimization: Public Health, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Trends, and Green Criminology
Green criminologists have argued that exposure to environmental pollution constitutes a serious form of green victimization of the general public and public health. This claim has not been widely assessed empirically. The present study employs data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) over time to examine trends in exposure to environmental toxins among the U.S. population. NHANES data allow such an assessment throug…
County-Level Environmental Crime Enforcement: A Case Study of Environmental/Green Crimes in Fulton County, Georgia, 1998-2014
Much of what is known about the responses to and the sentencing of environmental or green offenders comes from a limited number of studies that primarily draw on federal data maintained by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Little, however, is known about how states respond to environmental/green offenses and offenders and even less in known about how counties treat environmental offenders. The present study uses data from Fulton County, Geo…
The Great Recession, the Treadmill of Production and Ecological Disorganization: Did the Recession Decrease Toxic Releases Across US States, 2005–2014
Situational Crime Prevention and the Ecological Regulation of Green Crime: A Review and Discussion
Situational crime prevention theory suggests the need for innovative, non-criminal-justice polices to control crime, but that approach has not been widely employed by criminologists addressing the control of environmental crime. Numerous examples of innovative environmental social control practices can be found outside of the criminological literature; but within criminology, such studies have most often been undertaken by conservation criminolog…
Restoration of Nature or Special Interests? A Political Economy Analysis of the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project in South Korea
Environmental crime and justice
Several early green criminology (GC) studies addressed environmental justice (EJ) by examining environmental racism and proximity to environmental hazards. This chapter reviews the definition of green crime, its connection to EJ, and several primary areas of GC research. In each area, it draws attention to how that research addresses traditional and expanded notions of EJ. Green criminologists often define green justice/injustice using philosophi…
The Neglect of Quantitative Research in Green Criminology and Its Consequences
Green Criminology and Social Justice: A Reexamination of the Lynemouth Plant Closing and the Political Economic Causes of Environmental and Social Injustice
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…
Does the Modernization of Environmental Enforcement Reduce Toxic Releases? An Examination of Self-policing, Criminal Prosecutions, and Toxic Releases in the United States, 1988-2014
According to modernization theory, enforcement schemes that rely on end-of-the-pipe regulation are not as effective at achieving improved environmental performance as market-based approaches that encourage pollution prevention. Consistent with that observation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency transitioned to the use of self-policing to encourage pollution prevention. Other studies note that environmental compliance is significantly affec…
The Sentencing/Punishment of Federal Environmental/Green Criminal Offenders, 2000-2013
While much has been written about the purpose of environmental sentencing, little research summarizes the actual sentencing of environmental offenders, forcing criminologists to generalize about environmental sentencing patterns. This study helps fill that gap by examining federal environmental sentences across 22 environmental statutes from 2000 through 2013. The analysis examines case distributions and mean sentences received by individuals (N …
The Weak Probability of Punishment for Environmental Offenses and Deterrence of Environmental Offenders: A Discussion Based on Usepa Criminal Cases, 1983–2013
Numerous studies observe a decrease in environmental crimes following imposition of fines or penalties potentially due to general and specific deterrent effects. Here we explore whether those deterrent effects appear plausible by estimating the probability of a USEPA criminal case occurring each year between 1983 through 2013. Our analysis shows that there is an extremely low probability of an environmental crime case being prosecuted criminally …
Green Criminology and the Reconceptualization of School Violence: Comparing Green School Violence and Traditional Forms of School Violence for School Children
The Ecological Distribution of Community Advantage and Disadvantage: Power Structures, Political Economy, Communities, and Green-State Crime and Justice
A Radical Economic Model of Crime with an Empirical Test in Non-city Zip Codes
A Marxian Interpretation of the Environmental Kuznets Curve: Global Capitalism and the Rise and Fall (and Rise) of Pollution
Discussion of the economic development–pollution link has, with some exceptions (Boyce 2002; Burkett 2006; Foster 2000, 1999; Foster and Burkett 2008; Foster, Clark, and York 2010; Jorgenson 2011, ...
Social Justice and Criminal Justice
Defining Crime: A Critique of the Concept and Its Implication
Defining Crime explores the limitations of the legal definition of crime, how that politically based definition has shaped criminological research, and why criminologists must redefine crime to includ
The Weak Probability of Punishment for Environmental Offenses and Deterrence of Environmental Offenders: A Discussion Based on Usepa Criminal Cases, 1983–2013
Numerous studies observe a decrease in environmental crimes following imposition of fines or penalties potentially due to general and specific deterrent effects. Here we explore whether those deterrent effects appear plausible by estimating the probability of a USEPA criminal case occurring each year between 1983 through 2013. Our analysis shows that there is an extremely low probability of an environmental crime case being prosecuted criminally …
Environmental Hazards and School Segregation in Hillsborough County, Florida, 1987-1999
This article draws upon the political economy and urban ecology of race perspectives to examine trends in school segregation for schools located various distances from environmental hazards. We study trends in segregation among eighty-four public grade schools between the years of 1987 and 1999 in the Hillsborough County (Florida) School District. After controlling for the percentage of students eligible for free lunch, we find that grade schools…
A cross-national study of the association between per capita carbon dioxide emissions and exports to the United States
Toxic Crimes: Examining Corporate Victimization of the General Public Employing Medical and Epidemiological Evidence
The Relationship between Lead and Crime
This study investigates the association between air-lead levels and crime rates across 2,772 U.S. counties. Data for the analysis come from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Census, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Results suggest that air-lead levels have a direct effect on property and violent crime rates even after adjusting for general levels of air pollution and several structural covariates of crime. We also find th…
The Neglect of Quantitative Research in Green Criminology and Its Consequences
Coal Strip Mining, Mountaintop Removal, and the Distribution of Environmental Violations across the United States, 2002–2008
This study draws upon concepts in landscape research and environmental justice to examine the association between community poverty and environmental violations that occurred between 2002 and 2008 across 110 coal strip mining operations located within the United States. Multivariate results suggest that residential poverty is greater around facilities that have been identified as violating an environmental law. In addition, the association betwee…
Exploring the Relationship between Neoliberalism and Homicide: A Cross-National Perspective
Research has shown that neoliberal economic policies may increase violence. In this study we extend this logic to create a “neoliberalism-homicide hypothesis.” We test this hypothesis using two global measures of neoliberalism (the Economic Freedom of the World Index and the Index of Economic Freedom) and 2014 homicide rates for 142 nations. Regression analysis provides little support for the neoliberalism-homicide hypothesis using the global ind…
Campaign Contributions, Post-War Reconstruction Contracts, and State Crime
This article presents a case-control study of the relationship between Federal-level campaign contributions, corporate political connections, and the awarding of post-war reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cases are 135 companies that received post-war contracts and controls are 135 randomly selected companies matched on industry. Results reveal that both campaign contributions and political connections significantly increase a com…
The Sentencing/Punishment of Federal Environmental/Green Criminal Offenders, 2000-2013
While much has been written about the purpose of environmental sentencing, little research summarizes the actual sentencing of environmental offenders, forcing criminologists to generalize about environmental sentencing patterns. This study helps fill that gap by examining federal environmental sentences across 22 environmental statutes from 2000 through 2013. The analysis examines case distributions and mean sentences received by individuals (N …
Disappearing act: The representation of corporate crime research in criminological literature
The power of oppression: Understanding the history of criminology as a science of oppression
The Treadmill of Production and the Treadmill of Law: Propositions for Analyzing Law, Ecological Disorganization and Crime
Treadmill of production (ToP) arguments have significant implications for the study of environmental crime. A current limitation of those arguments involves their application to environmental law and its enforcement. We argue that a treadmill of law (ToL) shapes and maintains production through lawmaking and enforcement practices, issues that have yet to receive significant attention in the ToP literature. To illustrate the connection between the…
The Ecological Distribution of Community Advantage and Disadvantage: Power Structures, Political Economy, Communities, and Green-State Crime and Justice
The Founding of Environmental Justice Organizations Across U.S. Counties during the 1990s and 2000s: Civil Rights and Environmental Cross-Movement Effects
This research expands upon organizational ecology theory to examine variations in founding of organizations in the formalized sector of the environmental justice movement across U.S. counties for two time periods (1990—1999 and 2000—2008). Cross-movement effects are examined to determine if founding is more or less likely to occur in counties where related civil rights and environmental organizations are located. Consistent with the notion of agg…
Does the Modernization of Environmental Enforcement Reduce Toxic Releases? An Examination of Self-policing, Criminal Prosecutions, and Toxic Releases in the United States, 1988-2014
According to modernization theory, enforcement schemes that rely on end-of-the-pipe regulation are not as effective at achieving improved environmental performance as market-based approaches that encourage pollution prevention. Consistent with that observation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency transitioned to the use of self-policing to encourage pollution prevention. Other studies note that environmental compliance is significantly affec…
Death Matters: Victimization by Particle Matter from Coal Fired Power Plants in the US, a Green Criminological View
County-Level Environmental Crime Enforcement: A Case Study of Environmental/Green Crimes in Fulton County, Georgia, 1998-2014
Much of what is known about the responses to and the sentencing of environmental or green offenders comes from a limited number of studies that primarily draw on federal data maintained by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Little, however, is known about how states respond to environmental/green offenses and offenders and even less in known about how counties treat environmental offenders. The present study uses data from Fulton County, Geo…
Green Criminology and Social Justice: A Reexamination of the Lynemouth Plant Closing and the Political Economic Causes of Environmental and Social Injustice
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…
A Marxian Interpretation of the Environmental Kuznets Curve: Global Capitalism and the Rise and Fall (and Rise) of Pollution
Discussion of the economic development–pollution link has, with some exceptions (Boyce 2002; Burkett 2006; Foster 2000, 1999; Foster and Burkett 2008; Foster, Clark, and York 2010; Jorgenson 2011, ...
Similarities between green criminology and green science: Toward a typology of green criminology
Green criminology can be described as the study of environmental harm, crime, victimization, law, regulation, and justice. In this essay, we note that the development of green criminology has been slowed by the divergent, multifaceted, issue-driven approach to the field. We propose a green criminological typology that draws upon divisions established in the natural sciences literatures in the fields of ecotoxicology, environmental toxicology, and…
Environmental crime prosecutions in Ireland, 2004–2014
Despite increased interest in environmental crime and green criminology, few studies address the use of criminal penalties in response to environmental crimes. A handful of published examples employ data from the United States or the Flanders court system, and little is known about how other nations punish environmental violations. Addressing this issue, the current study examined the use of criminal environmental penalties in Ireland from 2004 t…
Situational Crime Prevention and the Ecological Regulation of Green Crime: A Review and Discussion
Situational crime prevention theory suggests the need for innovative, non-criminal-justice polices to control crime, but that approach has not been widely employed by criminologists addressing the control of environmental crime. Numerous examples of innovative environmental social control practices can be found outside of the criminological literature; but within criminology, such studies have most often been undertaken by conservation criminolog…
Ecocities, Crime, and Justice: Ecocity Theory, Social Disorganization, and Green Criminology
This article examines the integration of ecocities research with a major criminological approach to the examination of crime and social control, social disorganization theory. Social disorganization theory draws attention to the relationship between community organization, formal and informal community social control and crime. That research has drawn inspiration from other disciplines. In the current analysis, we review ecocity theory and illust…
Mapping Homicide Clusters across the United States Using County Level Data, 2004-2012 with Comparisons to Earlier Studies
Mapping crime can help identify geographic areas where crime clusters, and potentially help reveal factors that affect the production of crime at the structural level. Such information could have useful policy purposes. This study examines county-level homicide clusters in the US (2004–2012), and compares them to results from prior studies. The analysis employs SaTScanTM covariate adjustments based on epidemiological mapping algorithms used in di…
Sociology
Sociology
Out of Order? Policing Black People
Popular culture as an ideological mask
Working Together: Towards an Integrative Critical Criminological Model for Social Justice
L'A. presente un modele critique d'analye criminologique qui permet de prendre en compte la notion de justice sociale. Il rappelle que la criminologie critique insiste sur l'influence des facteurs structurels qui sous-tendent les processus de stratification entre les classes, les sexes et les races au sein des societes modernes, en matiere d'analyse de la criminalite. Il etudie la relation entre langage, conscience et justice sociale et pose le p…
The power of oppression: Understanding the history of criminology as a science of oppression
Toxic Crimes: Examining Corporate Victimization of the General Public Employing Medical and Epidemiological Evidence
Environmental Hazards and School Segregation in Hillsborough County, Florida, 1987-1999
This article draws upon the political economy and urban ecology of race perspectives to examine trends in school segregation for schools located various distances from environmental hazards. We study trends in segregation among eighty-four public grade schools between the years of 1987 and 1999 in the Hillsborough County (Florida) School District. After controlling for the percentage of students eligible for free lunch, we find that grade schools…
Mao
Michael Lynch presents an engaging and thorough account of Mao's life and politics, making use of a wealth of primary and secondary sources. He locates Maoism in the broader context of twentieth century Chinese history, discussing the development of the Chinese Communist Party, the creation of the People's Republic of China and the Cultural Revolution, and the part played by Mao in the Cold War. Details of Mao's controversial private life as well…
Slippery Business: Race, Class, and Legal Determinants of Penalties Against Petroleum Refineries
This study examines whether petroleum refineries that violate environmental laws in Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities tend to receive smaller fines than those refineries in White and affluent communities. The sample consists of all petroleum refinery facilities fined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) between 1998 and 1999 for violating the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and/or the Resource Conservation and Recovery …
Disappearing act: The representation of corporate crime research in criminological literature
The Relationship between Lead and Crime
This study investigates the association between air-lead levels and crime rates across 2,772 U.S. counties. Data for the analysis come from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Census, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Results suggest that air-lead levels have a direct effect on property and violent crime rates even after adjusting for general levels of air pollution and several structural covariates of crime. We also find th…
Campaign Contributions, Post-War Reconstruction Contracts, and State Crime
This article presents a case-control study of the relationship between Federal-level campaign contributions, corporate political connections, and the awarding of post-war reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cases are 135 companies that received post-war contracts and controls are 135 randomly selected companies matched on industry. Results reveal that both campaign contributions and political connections significantly increase a com…
A cross-national study of the association between per capita carbon dioxide emissions and exports to the United States
Coal Strip Mining, Mountaintop Removal, and the Distribution of Environmental Violations across the United States, 2002–2008
This study draws upon concepts in landscape research and environmental justice to examine the association between community poverty and environmental violations that occurred between 2002 and 2008 across 110 coal strip mining operations located within the United States. Multivariate results suggest that residential poverty is greater around facilities that have been identified as violating an environmental law. In addition, the association betwee…
The Founding of Environmental Justice Organizations Across U.S. Counties during the 1990s and 2000s: Civil Rights and Environmental Cross-Movement Effects
This research expands upon organizational ecology theory to examine variations in founding of organizations in the formalized sector of the environmental justice movement across U.S. counties for two time periods (1990—1999 and 2000—2008). Cross-movement effects are examined to determine if founding is more or less likely to occur in counties where related civil rights and environmental organizations are located. Consistent with the notion of agg…
Similarities between green criminology and green science: Toward a typology of green criminology
Green criminology can be described as the study of environmental harm, crime, victimization, law, regulation, and justice. In this essay, we note that the development of green criminology has been slowed by the divergent, multifaceted, issue-driven approach to the field. We propose a green criminological typology that draws upon divisions established in the natural sciences literatures in the fields of ecotoxicology, environmental toxicology, and…
Crime in the Coal Industry: Implications for Green Criminology and Treadmill of Production
This research examines the connection between political donations, lobbying, levels of production, and state enforcement efforts in the coal industry. The authors draw on treadmill of production theory as developed by Schnaiberg to situate the analysis within green criminology. Specifically, based on treadmill of production theory the authors hypothesize that coal companies are more likely to increase political donations and lobbying efforts prio…
The Treadmill of Crime
Drawing on the work of Allan Schnaiberg, this book returns political economy to green criminology and examines how the expansion of capitalism shapes environmental law, crime and justice. The book is organized around crimes of ecological withdrawals and ecological additions. The Treadmill of Crime is written by acclaimed experts on the subject of green criminology and examines issues such as the crime in the energy sector as well as the release o…
Marx, Karl
The work of Karl Marx (1818–1883) has had a significant impact on the development of radical criminology. Marx's approach assumes each economic system develops a unique class structure that shapes life chances and is tied to social, political, and economic power. The class structure also has implications for social control as well as the definition and causes of crime. Radical criminology has garnered significant theoretical attention and empiric…
Green and Environmental Criminology
Green and environmental criminology represents the coming together of two areas of study: particularly, the study of environmental harms, justice, and laws with the study of class, race, gender, and ethnicity inequalities examined by radical criminologists. These research initiatives include studies of green offending, green victimization, and costs associated with pollution, manufacturing, and distribution of environmental hazards, and enforceme…
Social Justice and Criminal Justice
Defining Crime: A Critique of the Concept and Its Implication
Defining Crime explores the limitations of the legal definition of crime, how that politically based definition has shaped criminological research, and why criminologists must redefine crime to includ
Environmental justice: A criminological perspective
This article examines studies related to environmental justice in the criminological literature and from a criminological perspective. Criminologists have long been concerned with injustices in the criminal justice system related to the enforcement of criminal law. In the 1990s, following the emergence of green criminology, a handful of criminologists have drawn attention to environmental justice as an extension of more traditional criminological…
Death Matters: Victimization by Particle Matter from Coal Fired Power Plants in the US, a Green Criminological View
Sociology (37 works) · Political science (36 works) · Law (30 works) · Criminology (29 works) · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses (28 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (17 works) · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities (17 works) · Economics (15 works) · Politics (13 works) · Psychology (13 works)