NCJ Number
154294
Journal
European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Dated: (1994) Pages: 168-179
Date Published
1994
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This article analyzes the problems of enforcing environmental laws, and tries to determine where the root causes of these problems are embedded and whether remedies are at hand to overcome the problems. The starting point for an analysis of enforcement problems must be the legal framework of environmental crimes, because a crucial point of criminal environmental law enforcement lies in the definition of an environmental offense.
Abstract
Evaluation research suggests that the outcomes of criminal environmental laws are rather poor, if measured in terms of adjudication rates and sentencing. Furthermore, the outcomes are rather distorted, insofar as criminal law is concentrating on small-scale polluters or that which should be labeled everyday polluting behavior of individuals. In summarizing the research on the outcomes of criminal environmental law enforcement in Europe, the following points must be made: (1) only minor proportions of environmental cases are brought to criminal court (18 to 55 percent); (2) sanctions meted out are almost exclusively fines (86 to 100 percent); and (3) the size of fines is rather modest. Footnotes