This double issue deals with the environmental crimes of entities with a global reach -- the World Bank, the U.S. military, the chemical industry, and toxic waste disposers -- and the responses of activists and victims to these policies and practices. Do such practices constitute "crimes of globalization"? How can activist engagement and human rights law present obstacles? Among the social movements analyzed are those seeking to tax global financial transactions to help citizens; anti-military movements linked to issues of environmental and social justice; and the groundswell that led to passage of the first important toxic waste legislation in U.S. history. Other essays confront the problem of reducing environmental degradation (whether labeled crime, regulatory violations, or just smart business practices) in market economies. "Sustainability" is a phrase that engenders a vague sense of goodwill toward the Third World, and the environment generally, but has done little to radically shift us away from top-down development strategies and oppressive global trading practices. Alternative environmental ethics are explored.

The second set of articles covers the widening net of criminalization affecting the disempowered, and the retrograde racial politics associated with discourses on welfare mothers, the drug war, immigrants, violent schools, and Native Americans. George W. Bush's administration promises to aggravate this tendency, while undermining traditional civil liberties and 30 years of environmental legislation.