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Restorative Justice for Illegal Harms Against Animals: A Potential Answer Full of Interrogations

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The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Restorative Justice

Abstract

Based on a green victimological perspective, Varona explores the applicability of a restorative approach to illegal harms against animals. The chapter challenges the assumption that illegal harms against animals are victimless offences, arguing instead that they produce human and non-human victims. The chapter analyses two major issues in relation to the notion and the principles of restorative justice. Firstly, it argues that the demand for criminalisation by the animal welfare and rights movement might entail incoherent and ineffective practices associated with punitivism. Secondly, to be a meaningful response to illegal harms against animals, specific restorative programmes have to be developed with regard to domestic and wild animals in different contexts. The chapter offers some concrete proposals for action within the Spanish legal framework.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    According to the Ministry of Interior (2020, p. 278), in 2019, 3, 629 persons were detained or investigated for environmental crimes by the specialised police force called the Civil Guard. Of those, 601 were for animal abuse, 134 for illegal trafficking of protected species and 403 for forest fires. That same year, 104,090 administrative offences against the environment were investigated by police, mainly about spills (20,084), breaches against fishery rules (12,491) and alleged mistreatment of companion animals (10,332). According to the General Prosecutor’s Office (2020, p. 856), crimes against the environment and against animals have increased in the last two? decades. In 2019, 1180 sentences were imposed (57 for crimes against the environment, 290 against plants and wild animals, 136 for forest fires, and 293 for animal abuse, the kind of crime in this group that has experienced the greatest increase).

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  1. Basque Institute of Criminology, Donostia/San Sebastian, Spain

    Gema Varona

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  1. Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Brunilda Pali

  2. RegNet School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Miranda Forsyth

  3. RegNet School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Felicity Tepper

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Varona, G. (2022). Restorative Justice for Illegal Harms Against Animals: A Potential Answer Full of Interrogations. In: Pali, B., Forsyth, M., Tepper, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Restorative Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04223-2_13

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