Responses to Prison for Environmental Criminals: Impacts of Incident, Perpetrator, and Respondent Characteristics

• NCJ Number: 195205
• Journal: Environment and Behavior Volume: 34 Issue: 2 Dated: March 2002 Pages: 194-215
• Author(s): Ralph B. Taylor; Robert J. Mason
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 22 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study discusses perceptions of sanctions for environmental crimes.

Abstract

Environmental regulation enforcement techniques are informal persuasion efforts, administrative sanctions, and criminal sanctions. Regulators’ decisions to move from reliance on informal persuasion to obtain compliance to administrative sanctions depend upon noticeability, expected environmental and political impacts, and whether the location was more likely to attract public attention. How the polluter behaved could supersede the importance of incident features. The transition from imposing civil or administrative penalties to imposing criminal penalties is at least as complex as the decision of whether to start administrative proceedings. A diverse set of undergraduates at a large public university was asked to read about and respond to eight environmental crime scenarios based on a real crime. A 2 X 2 X 2 (Fire X Record X Complied) randomized design varying seriousness of event (Fire), previous criminality of the offender (Record), and cooperation of the offender (Complied) was used. Results showed that the majority of respondents agreed with sending the offender to prison for his environmental crime, despite the lengthiness of the sentence. Perceived seriousness of the incident exerted a significant impact on agreeing or disagreeing with going to prison. Increasing offender cooperation made respondents less likely to agree with going to prison. The more cooperative the offender had been, the more respondents agreed his sentence was too lengthy. The greater the respondents thought the offender’s chances of re-offending in the future, the less likely they were to agree that the sentence was too long. This study suggests some strong similarities between how environmental regulators structure discretion when moving from informal to administrative sanctions and how lay people react to severe criminal punishments for environmental offenses. 3 tables, 22 notes, 44 references