NCJ Number
138887
Journal
American Criminal Law Review Volume: 29 Issue: 4 Dated: (Summer 1992) Pages: 1235-1260
Date Published
1992
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This article examines how to apply the environmental sentencing guidelines today and how they may change in the future.
Abstract
Under its congressional mandate to promulgate specific sentencing guidelines for all Federal offenses, perhaps the most difficult task of the Federal Sentencing Commission was to develop guidelines for environmental offenses. With new statutes and scant case law or legislative history for the sentencing of environmental crimes, the Commission had little precedent for guidance. The Commission recognized the difficulty of applying a strict formula to often imprecise and intangible factors that are involved in the sentencing of environmental offenders. Consequently, it promulgated broad categories and left the court with wide latitude to depart from the guidelines based on a guiding principle of harm and risk of harm. The result was a coherent system that distinguished among environmental offenses, but had gaps and insufficient definition. As empirical data are collected, the Commission will use the amendment process to fill the gaps and provide additional explanation in the commentary. Since average sentences for environmental offenders will probably not decrease, however, critics are unlikely to be appeased by these amendments. It will be more difficult to develop comprehensive and coherent guidelines for corporate environmental offenders. For corporations there is a wider range of variables that pertain to responsibility, relevant conduct, ability to remedy the wrong, and prior history of wrongdoing. The challenge for the Commission will be to reconcile these variables. 145 footnotes