Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-5wvtr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T06:40:43.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lobster Poaching and the Ironies of Law Enforcement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

John L. McMullan  and
David C. Perrier
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article studies law in action as it relates to organized lobster poaching in Canada. It examines the distinct pattern of relationships that constitutes poaching as a business enterprise and analyzes how “living law” operates as an ironic facilitative form for that which it tries to control. We argue that business poachers evade, avoid, and neutralize fishery laws and regulations by creatively using and manipulating the legal boundaries and organizational resources at their disposal. In effect, the law is an enabling structure for blue water illegality. We analyze business poaching activities as a type of workplace crime, and we account for regulatory failure in the lobster fishery.

Type
Of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , 2002 , pp. 679 - 717
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article was presented at the meetings of the Law and Society Association and the Research Committee on Sociology of Law, July 3–8, 2001, Budapest, Hungary. The authors wish to acknowledge the Atlantic Institute of Criminology for its financial support in conducting this research and the editor and the anonymous reviewers of the Law & Society Review for their helpful comments.

References

References

Acheson, J. M. (1975) “The Lobster Fiefs: Economic and Ecological Effects of Territoriality in the Maine Lobster Industry,” 3 Human Ecology 183–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acheson, J. M. (1987) “The Lobster Fiefs Revisited,” in McCay, B. J. & Acheson, J. M., eds., The Questions of the Commons. Tuscon, AZ: Univ. of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Acheson, J. M. (1988) The Lobster Gangs of Maine. Hanover, NH: Univ. Press of New England.Google Scholar
Aoki, K., Kagan, R. A., & Axelrad, L. (2000) “Industrial Effluent Control in the United States and Japan,” in Kagan, R. A. & Axelrad, L., eds., Regulatory Encounters: Multinational Corporations and American Adversarial Legalism. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Apostle, R., Kasdan, L., & Hanson, A. (1984) “Political Efficacy and Political Activity Among Fishermen in Southwest Nova Scotia: A Research Note,” 19 J. of Canadian Studies 157–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arai, B. (1990) “The Enforcement Practices of Fishery Officers: A Case Study from the Scotia - Fundy Region.” Presented at the Atlantic Association of Sociologists annual meeting.Google Scholar
Arai, B. (1994) “Policy and Practice in the Atlantic Fishers: Problems of Regulatory Enforcement,” 20 Canadian Public Policy 353–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bardach, E., & Kagan, R. A. (1982) Going by the Book: The Problem of the Regulatory Unreasonableness, A Twentieth Century Fund Study. Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Barrett, G. (1987) Uneven Development, Rent and the Social Organization of Capital: A Case Study of the Fishing Industry of Nova Scotia, Canada. D. Phil. Diss., Univ. of Sussex, Brighton, England.Google Scholar
Best, J. (1980) “Licensed to Steal,” in Love, R. W., ed., Changing Interpretations and New Sources in Naval History. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Best, J., & Luckenbill, D. F. (1982) Organizing Deviance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Blewett, E., Furlong, W., & Toews, P. (1987) “Canada's Experience in Measuring the Deterrent Effect of Fisheries Law Enforcement,” in Sutinen, J. and Hennessey, T., eds., Fisheries Law Enforcement: Programs, Problems and Evaluation. Marine Technical Report 93, Univ. of Rhode Island.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, J. (1985) To Punish or Persuade: Enforcement of Coal Mine Safety. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, J. (1993) “The Nursing Home Industry,” in Tonry, M. and J. Reiss, A. Jr., eds., Beyond the Law: Crime in Complex Organizations. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chambliss, W. J. (1973) “Vice, Corruption, Bureaucracy and Power,” in Chambliss, W. J., ed., Sociological Readings in the Conflict Perspective. London: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Chambliss, W.J. (1978) On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Ciriacy-Wantrup, S. V., & Bishop, R. (1975) “Common Property as a Concept in Natural Resource Policy,” 15 National Resources J. 713–27.Google Scholar
Clement, W. (1986) Struggle to Organize: Resistance in Canada's Fishery. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. K. (1977) “The Concept of Criminal Organization,” 17 The British J. of Criminology 97–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cressey, D. R. (1972) Criminal Organization: Its Elementary Forms. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Davis, A. (1991) “Insidious Rationalities: The Institutionalization of Small Boat Fishing and the Rise of the Rapacious Fisher,” 4 Maritime Anthropological Studies 13–31.Google Scholar
Davis, A., & Kasdan, L. (1984) “Bankrupt Government Policies and Belligerent Fishermen Responses: Dependency and Conflict in the Southwest Nova Scotia Small Boat Fisheries,” 19 J. of Canadian Studies 108–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, A., & Thiessen, V. (1988) “Public Policy and Social Control in the Atlantic Fisheries,” 15 Canadian Public Policy 66–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Department of the Environment (1975) Lobster Fishery Task Force Report. Ottawa: Fisheries and Marine Services.Google Scholar
Department of Fisheries and Oceans (1975) Preliminary Report—Lobster Fisheries Task Force. Ottawa: Department of Fisheries and Oceans.Google Scholar
Department of Fisheries and Oceans (1990) An Overview of Proposed Amendments to the Fishers Act. An Overview of Proposed Amendments to the Fishers Act: Department of Supply and Services.Google Scholar
DeWolf, A. G. (1974) “Lobster Fishery of the Maritime Provinces: Economic Effects of Regulations,” Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Bulletin 187, Environment Canada, Ottawa.Google Scholar
Ditton, J. (1977) Part-Time Crime: An Ethnography of Fiddling and Pilferage. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ericson, R. (1982) Reproducing Order: A Study of Police Patrol Work. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, P. (1993) The Psychology of Crime. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furlong, W. J. (1991) “The Deterrent Effect of Regulatory Enforcement in the Fishery,” 67 Land Economics 116–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grabosky, P., & Braithwaite, J. (1986) Manners Gentle: Enforcement Strategies of Australian Business Regulatory Agencies. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Grimshaw, R., & Jefferson, T. (1987) Interpreting Police Work. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Gunningham, N. “Negotiated Non-Compliance: A Case Study of Regulatory Failure,” 9 Law and Policy 69–87.Google Scholar
Hanson, A., and Lamson, C. (1984) Fisheries Decision-Making: Perspectives on East Coast Canadian Policy Setting and Implementation. Halifax: Dalhousie Univ.Google Scholar
Hay, D. (1977) “Poaching and the Game Laws on Cannock Chase,” in Hay, D., Linebaugh, P., Rule, J. G., Thompson, E. P., & Winslow, C., eds., Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England. Middlesex: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Hawkins, K. (1984) Environment and Enforcement. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Henry, S. (1978) The Hidden Economy: The Context and Control of Borderline Crime. Oxford: Martin Robertson.Google Scholar
Henry, S., & Mars, G. (1978) “Crime at Work: The Social Construction of Amateur Property Theft,” 12 Sociology 245–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. (1969) Bandits. London: Widenfeld and Nealson.Google Scholar
Hopkins, A. (1994) “Compliance with What? The Fundamental Regulatory Question,” 34 British J. of Criminology 431–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howkins, A. (1979) “Economic Crime and Class Law: Poaching and the Game Laws, 1840–1880,” in Burman, S. B. & Harrell-Bond, B. E., eds., The Imposition of Law. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hutter, B. M. (1999) “Controlling Workplace Deviance: State Regulation of Occupational Health and Safety,” 8 Research and the Sociology of Work 191–209.Google Scholar
Jones, D. (1982) “The Poacher, A Study in Victorian Crime and Protest,” in Jones, D., ed., Crime, Protest, Community and Police in 19th Century Britain. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Jones, T., and Levi, M. (1983) “The Police and the Majority: The Neglect of the Obvious,” 56 Police 4.Google Scholar
Kagan, R. A., Gunningham, N., & Thornton, D. (2001) “Regulatory Regimes and Variations in Corporate Environmental Performance: Evidence From the Pulp and Paper Industry,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Budapest, Hungary, July.Google Scholar
Kearney, J. F. (1984) Working Together: A Study of Fishermen's Response to Government Management of the District 4A Lobster Fishery. Pointe-de-l‘Église, Nova Scotia: Presses de l'Université Sainte-Anne.Google Scholar
Kearney, J. F. (1988) “The Lobster Trap Tag in Fishing Area 34 (Southwest Nova Scotia) : The Technical, Legal and Management Problems Associated with Tag Design,” Research Document, Maritime Fishermen's Union, Yarmouth.Google Scholar
Kuperan, K., & Sutinen, J. G. (1998) “Blue Water Crime: Deterrence, Legitimacy and Compliance in Fisheries,” 32 Law & Society Rev. 309–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linebaugh, P. (1991) The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Lundman, R.J. (1980) Police and Policing: An Introduction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Mack, J. (1972) “The Able Criminal,” 12 British J. of Sociology 44–55.Google Scholar
MacPherson, C. B. (1978) Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Manning, P. K. (1977) Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Marchak, P. M. (1984) Green Gold: The Forest Industry in British Columbia. Vancouver: British Columbia Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Marchak, P. M. (1987) “Uncommon Property,” in Marchak, P., Guppy, N., & McMullan, J., eds., Uncommom Property: The Fishing and Fish-Processing Industries in British Columbia. Toronto: Methuen.Google Scholar
Marchak, P. M. (1989) “What Happens When Common Property Becomes Uncommon?” 80 B.C. Studies 3–24.Google Scholar
Marchak, P. M., Guppy, N., & McMullan, J. L., eds. Uncommon Property: The Fishing and Fish-Processing Industries in British Columbia. Toronto: Methuen.Google Scholar
Mars, G. (1984) Cheats at Work: An Anthropology of Workplace Crime. London: Un-win Paperbacks.Google Scholar
Martin, K. D. (1979) “Play by the Rules or Don't Play at All: Space Division and Resource Allocation in a Rural Newfoundland Fishing Community,” in Anderson, R., ed., North Atlantic Maritime Culture. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.Google Scholar
Mathews, R., & Phyne, J. (1988) “Regulating and Newfoundland Inshore Fishery: Traditional Values versus State Control in the Regulation of a Common Property Resource,” 23 J. of Canadian Studies 158–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McBarnet, D. J. (1978) “The Police and the State: Arrest, Legality and the Law,” in Littlejohn, G., ed., Power and the State. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
McBarnet, D.J. (1981) Conviction: Law, the State and the Construction of Justice. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McBarnet, D.J. (1993) “Legitimate Rackets: Tax Evasion, Tax Avoidance and the Boundaries of Legality,” 3 J. of Human Justice 56–74.Google Scholar
McCay, B. J. (1978) “Systems Ecology, People Ecology and the Anthropology of Fishing Communities,” 6 Human Ecology 397–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCay, B.J. (1984) “The Pirates of Piscary: An Ethnohistory of Illegal Fishing in New Jersey,” 31 Ethnohistory 17–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McEachern, D. B. (1969) Progress Report on the Trap Limit and License Control Survey. Ottawa: Department of the Environment, Maritimes and Newfoundland Lobster Fisheries, Economics Branch, Fisheries Service.Google Scholar
McIntosh, M. (1973) “The Growth of Racketeering,”“ 2 Economy and Society 35–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mcintosh, M. (1975) The Organization of Crime. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
McMullan, J. L., & Perrier, D. (1997) “Poaching vs. the Law: The Social Organization of Illegal Fishing,“ in McMullan, J. L., Perrier, D., Smith, S., & Swan, P., eds., Crimes, Laws and Communities. Halifax: Fernwood.Google Scholar
McMullan, J. L., Perrier, D., & Okihiro, N. (1993) “Regulation, Illegality and Social Conflict in the Nova Scotia Lobster Fishery,” 33 J. of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 121–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, M. L., & Maanen, J. Van (1979) “Boats Don't Fish, People Do: Some Ethnographic Notes on the Federal Management of Fisheries in Gloucester,” 38 Human Organization 377–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munsche, P. B. (1981) Gentlemen and Poachers: The English Game Laws 1671-1831. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Netboy, A. (1968) The Atlantic Salmon: A Vanishing Species? Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
O'Malley, P. (1979) “Class Conflict, Land and Social Banditry,” 26 Social Problems 271–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peace, A. ”When the Salmon Comes: The Politics of Summer Fishing in the Irish Community,“ 52 J. of Anthropological Research 85–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, F., & Tombs, S. ”Hazards, Law and Class: Contextualizing the Regulation of Corporate Crime,“ 6 Social and Legal Studies 79–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perrier, D., & McMullan, J. L. (1996) “Enforcement and Illegality in the Southwest Nova Scotian Lobster Fishery,” unpublished report.Google Scholar
Phyne, J. (1988) State Regulation of the Inshore and Inland Fisheries of Newfoundland: A Study of the Role of Federal Fishery Officers. Ph.D. Diss., McMaster Univ., Hamilton.Google Scholar
Phyne, J. (1990) “Dispute Settlement in the Newfoundland Inshore Fishery: A Study of Fishery Officers’ Responses to Gear Conflicts in Inshore Fishing Communities,“” 3 Maritime Anthropological Studies 88–102.Google Scholar
Phyne, J. (1992) “Changes from Compliance to Deterrence among Federal Fishery Officers: An Atypical Case of Regulatory Policing?” 29 Canadian Rev. of Sociology and Anthropology 524–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, E. E. ”Report of the Canadian Lobster Commission 1898,“ in 31st Annual Report, Supplement 1. Ottawa: Department of Maritime Fisheries.Google Scholar
Royal Commission of Pacific Fisheries Policy (1982) Turning the Tide: A New Policy for Canada's Pacific Fisheries. Ottawa: Queen's Printer.Google Scholar
Rule, G.J. (1977) “Wrecking and Coastal Plunder,“ in Hay, D., Linebaugh, P., Rule, J. G., Thompson, E. P., & Winslow, C., eds., Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England. Middlesex: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Scott, J. (1986) “Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance,” 13 J. of Peasant Studies 5–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, A., & Tugwell, M. (1981) “Public Regulation of Commercial Fisheries in Canada—The Maritime Lobster Fishery,” Technical Report No. 16. Ottawa: Economic Council of Canada.Google Scholar
Sharpe, J. A. (1984) Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750. London: Longman Group Ltd.Google Scholar
Shearing, C. (1981) “Subterranean Processes in the Maintenance of Power: An Examination of the Mechanisms Coordinating Police Action,” 18 Canadian Rev. of Sociology and Anthropology 3.Google Scholar
Snider, L. (1990) “Cooperative Models and Corporate Crime: Panacea or Cop-Out?” 36 Crime and Delinquency 373–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stiles, G. (1972) “Labour Recruitment and the Family Crew in Newfoundland,“ in Anderson, R. R., ed., North Atlantic Maritime Cultures. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.Google Scholar
Sutinen, J. G., and Kuperan, K. (1989) Compliance and Enforcement in Northeast Fisheries. Saugus, MA: New England Fishery Management Council.Google Scholar
Sutinen, J. G., & Gauvin, J. R. (1989) “An Econometric Study of Regulatory Enforcement and Compliance in the Commercial Inshore Lobster Fishery of Massachusetts,“ in Neher, P. A., Arnason, R., & Mollet, N., eds., Rights-Based Fishing. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Sutinen, J. G., Rieser, A., & Gauvin, J. R. (1990) “Measuring and Explaining Noncompliance in Federally Managed Fisheries,” 21 Ocean Development & International Law 335–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, L. (1981) “Man the Fisher: Salmon Fishing and the Expression of Community in a Rural Irish Settlement,” 8 American Ethnologist 774–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, L. (1987) “The River Would Run Red with Blood: Community and Common Property in an Irish Fishing Settlement,“ in McCay, B. J. & Acheson, J. M., eds., The Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1977) Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. Middlesex: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Winslow, C. (1977) “Sussex Smugglers,“ in Hay, D., Linebaugh, P., Rule, J. G., Thompson, E. P., & Winslow, C., eds., Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England. Middlesex: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Winter, S. C., & May, P.J. (2001) “The Role of Information and Interest-Organizations in Fostering Environmental Regulatory Compliance,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Budapest, Hungary, July.Google Scholar

Case Cited

R. v. Belliveau (NSCA) Nova Scotia Judgements (1986) NSJ No. 432, Action SCC No. 01553.Google Scholar