ABSTRACT
Few criminological studies have examined the extent of environmental crime and punishment, and little is known about how widespread environmental crimes are in society or the kinds of punishments environmental crimes receive. This is surprising and problematic. This outcome is surprising given the rapid growth of green criminology in recent years, and problematic because the paucity of studies examining the extent of environmental crime constrains the boundaries of criminological knowledge in a discipline already inclined to study street crimes as opposed to other types of crime.
The present study addresses these issues by examining the volume and formal responses to one type of environmental crime in the US that green criminologists have often overlooked: hazardous waste crime. The data used are a ten-year aggregation of hazardous waste violations, corrective actions, enforcement actions, and fines covering 1999–2008. Data were aggregated by state, and the distribution of these crimes was examined across states. The results indicate that the number of reported hazardous waste crime varies significantly across states, and that rates of punishments for these crimes are relatively low and consist of relatively small fines. The violation rate data also seems to suggest that hazardous waste environmental violations may be significantly underreported in official data.
