Environmental Crimes: A Summary Of Enforcement Actions To Support Business Productivity

Abstract

This study summarizes and compares the most relevant criminal enforcement actions to support business productivity conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the fiscal years 1995-2008; the important actions under consideration are the environmental crime cases initiated, defendants charged, years sentenced, fines (and restitution) and pollutants' reductions. A correlation analysis was used to evaluate the significant relationship (p-value=0.002) between the environmental crime cases initiated and the period of time in years; a power regression model (via curve fitting) was estimated to explain this relationship (R²_adj=0.998); the ratio of charged defendants to cases initiated (%) was measured as an indicator of the yearly enforcement productivity undertaken by the EPA, whose 95% prediction interval is graphically presented. In addition, other density measures of enforcement actions against environmental crimes, such as the years sentenced per defendant, and the economic amount of fines and restitution per defendant are included.