Safer communities, the environment and social justice: introduction to Special Issue

There is a long tradition of community focused scholarship in the discipline of criminology (e.g. Bursik and Webb, 1982; Sampson and Groves, 1989; Shaw and McKay, 1942; Tannenbaum, 1938; Taylor, 1995; Walklate, 1998). This is not surprising since the community plays a central role in crime reduction and crime prevention efforts. However, what is often missing from many criminological studies of the community are ways crime and the community are related to both social justice and the natural environment (except, see Pellow, 2004; Prelog, 2016; Stretesky et al., 2018; Taylor and Shumaker, 1990). The goal of this special issue is to encourage the expansion and scope of criminology to be more inclusive of both social justice and the natural environment. Before describing the contributions of the papers that make up this special issue we briefly consider the definition of community, the role of social justice, and the importance of the natural environment.