This chapter addresses the question of illegal timber from the perspective of criminology, the academic science of crime. Criminology is a so-called 'domain science' rather than an academic discipline, with practitioners from a variety of disciplines, such as psychology, law and the social sciences. This chapter focuses solely on criminal logging, logging that is related to other crimes, and in which (organized) crime networks are involved. The term 'organized forest crime' therefore seems appropriate. Finally, this chapter brings some criminological knowledge to the forest sector by giving some suggestions from the fields of criminology and timber forensics for improving detection and prevention of illegal timber.

Tags: environmental crime forests