ABSTRACT
In the US legal system, crime victims generally play little to no formal role in court proceedings and are rarely recognized by the courts; this is especially true for green victims and people living in communities impacted by environmental injustices. This structural practice limits our understanding of the full scope of green victimization in the country and fails to give voice to the powerless. In a radical departure from this historical trend, CITGO Refining was convicted and sentenced under violations of the US Clean Air Act in 2014, and for the first time in such a case, the court recognized victims living in the nearby fenceline community under the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA). In this chapter, we demonstrate how green criminologists can use data from the victim impact statements collected at sentencing as a vital source for understanding how green victims interpret their own victimization.
