Policing Environmental Protest: Power and Resistance in Pandemic Times

This book addresses the policing and social control of eco–justice movements during the COVID–19 pandemic, as well as activist practices of resistance during the same period. It is based on an extensive ethnographic fieldwork during the COVID–19 pandemic in Trento, Italy, where the author focused on two eco–justice groups opposing a high–speed railway and the containment of wild bears. Rooted in critical, green, cultural and sensory approaches within criminology, and enriched with interdisciplinary insights, the book discusses the intensification of policing strategies against eco–justice protesters during the pandemic and their increased exclusion from urban centres. At the same time, it also analyses activist practices of resistance foregrounding their radical and transformative imaginaries, and identifies directions for future critical and green criminological research in the area.