ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between legitimate corporations that generate hazardous waste and elements of organized crime with whom they contract for the removal, treatment, or disposition of those wastes. It describes the scope and importance of hazardous waste as a social problem and summarizes the variety of organized crime participation in waste handling. The chapter then explores the factors that enabled organized crime to become active in this sector of the economy. Analysis of the formation of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) legislation shows that corporate generators of hazardous waste were instrumental in securing a regulatory structure that would prove highly attractive to and well suited for organized crime participation. Lax implementation and enforcement undoubtedly played a big role in facilitating organized crime entry into the hazardous waste disposal industry. Analysis of the formation of hazardous waste disposal regulations captures such a criminogenic structure at the moment of its formation.
