Lay Victims’ Conceptions of Environmental Crime and Environmental Injustice: The Case of the Chem-Dyne Superfund Site

This project explores lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice through in-depth interviews with a snowball sample of people affected by, and former employees of, the Chem-Dyne Superfund site in Hamilton, Ohio, USA. Qualitative content analysis revealed that participants used the following criteria to define both environmental crime and environmental injustice: illegality, intentionality, harm and safety, and unfairness. These findings have important implications for studies of environmental crime and environmental injustice: (1) Lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are multidimensional concepts; (2) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are mostly anthropocentric; (3) there is significant conceptual overlap between environmental crime and environmental injustice in lay victim accounts; and (4) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are similar to, yet distinct from, formal and academic definitions.