Differential Treatment of Intentional and Accidental Violators (original) (raw)

The impact of the judicial objective function on the enforcement of environmental standards

Journal of Regulatory Economics, 2010

We investigate the influence of a judge's objective function on the type of sanctions used for enforcing environmental standards. We focus on the difference between monetary and non-monetary penalties. Therefore, we examine the extent to which judges take social costs of sanctions into account when making judgments in court in the context of environmental violations. Furthermore, we conduct an empirical analysis to test the main findings of the theoretical model using court data from several Belgian jurisdictions. We find that besides minimizing environmental damages judges also take social costs of sanctions into account in their decisionmaking.

Judicial Policy Lines in Criminal Sanctioning of Environmental Offenses: An Empirical Study

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

We analyze judicial policy lines concerning criminal environmental sanctioning using a unique European dataset of individual criminal cases, including case-specific information on offenses and offenders. We investigate policy choices made by criminal judges in lower courts as well as the relevant court of appeal. The sanctioning policy of judges proofs to be varied as well as consistent. Judges decide to postpone convictions for cases they deem less important. They carefully balance effective and suspended sanctions, in general using them as substitutes, but in specific cases opting to use them cumulatively. Overall, judges in lower courts balance environmental and classic criminal law and aim at protecting individuals and their possessions as well as the environment.

Applying Criminal Penalties and Consequences in Enforcing Environmental Protection Compliance

Our present Environmental Laws adopting criminal sanctions as means of environmental protection compliance focus on punishing the lack of a permit or the violation of permit or other regulatory requirements and conditions set out by the Environmental protection agencies. The author argues that if the role of the criminal law is restricted to defining the conditions of an administrative permit, and the authorities at the same time determine the conditions of criminal liability, this may point to the fact that a more direct environmental protection by the criminal law, such as exists for traditional crimes, is more difficult to reach in achieving an environmental end. The paper highlights the serious weaknesses in this approach. To this end, the premise of the paper therefore is that we should have graduated approach to environmental crimes that are less dependent on administrative law, especially where a prohibited act has serious consequence of creating death, serious injury, or a significant risk of death or serious injury. When this is the case the author argued that it can lead to criminal liability irrespective of a violation of administrative obligations, making serious environmental abuse to be treated in the same as violators of traditional crimes. Thus, the main focus of this paper is how do we fit in the typology of environmental crimes to elicit environmental protection compliance?

The Cost Effectiveness of Environmental Policy Instruments in the Presence of Imperfect Compliance

We aim to integrate information, monitoring and enforcement costs into the choice of environmental policy instruments. We use a static partial equilibrium framework to study different combinations of regulatory instruments (taxes, standards…) and enforcement instruments (criminal fine, administrative fine…). The firms' compliance decisions depend on the instrument combination selected by the government. The model is used to compare the welfare effects of different instrument combinations for the textile industry in Flanders. We find that administrative, implementation, enforcement and monitoring costs are important to decide on the necessity of an environmental policy. Moreover, we show that emission taxes are not necessarily the most cost-effective instrument. This result holds even if we include industry heterogeneity. The decision of whether to pursue an environmental policy or not depends crucially on the formulation of an appropriate monitoring and enforcement policy.

On Social and Market Sanctions in Deterring non Compliance in Pollution Standards

2007

In this paper, we theoretically explore the implications of social norms in deterring pollution standard fraud along with economic incentives provided both by markets and regulatory activities. The model assumes that a large number of risk-averse individuals differ not only in their private cost of compliance with the environmental standard but also in their individual aversion to fraud. The aversion of fraud is influenced by the extent of social norms. We show that there may be multiple equilibrium rates of compliance for a given enforcement policy. We also show that under risk aversion the potential loss in market revenues has an ambiguous effect on the equilibrium rates of compliance. Similarly, increasing the probability of audit may decrease the equilibrium rate of compliance when stochastic events make unvoluntary non compliance possible. Last, we show that the information brought to the market is crucial for polluters' behavior. For this, we explore the impact of self-rep...

Protecting Environment through Criminal Sanction Aggravation

Journal of Indonesian Legal Studies

This paper aims to explores the provision of aggravating criminal sanction that protects environment in environmental legislation. By focusing on the four laws as its primary data source, this study employed doctrinal legal research. The results showed that the weight accorded to criminal sanctions in environmental legislation, has varied. The PPLH Law provides for the amplification of criminal threats directed at corporations by adding 1/3 (one-third) of the criminal sentence. Only companies are subject to the penalty aggravation provisions of the Mining Law, and they are only imposed with one-third of the maximum criminal provision of fines. In the PPPH Law, the imposition of criminal threats weight is simply related to the quantity component. If the culprit is a corporation or official, the criminal sanction aggravation is increased by one-third. In Plantation Law, if the offender is a corporate or a government official, then the criminal punishment is intensified. The environmen...

Criminal law as a preventative tool of environmental regulation: compliance versus deterrence

Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 2020

The effective enforcement of environmental law is an issue which continues to engender considerable academic debate. The conclusions that may be drawn from such debate will have implications not only for the future of environmental law but also the wider regulatory reform agenda. This article commences with several noncontentious propositions. First, any regulatory regime ought to place considerable emphasis on preventing harm; within the context of environmental law, this view is encapsulated by the preventative principle. Secondly, one may be tempted to treat the criminal law as a purely reactive or curative mechanism were it not for the deterrent effect associated with the imposition of criminal sanctions. Therefore, the initial premise is that if environmental law is to become more preventative in scope, policymakers ought to consider how the deterrent effect of environmental criminal law may be bolstered. Academic publications and official reports are replete with assertions th...

Environmental Regulation: Proportional or Progressive Penalties?

2000

In this paper, we consider the design of optimal environmental poli- cies composed of pollution standards and probabilities of inspection, where fines for exceeding the standards depend on the degree of noncompliance and the environmental technology that the firm uses in its production pro- cess. We show that the selection of a progressive or a proportional penalty with respect to