A Graduated Punishment Approach to Environmental Crimes: Beyond Vindication of Administrative Authority in the United States and Europe

摘要

In both the United States and Europe, most environmental crime statutes focus on punishing disobedience to administrative rules and decisions. In most cases, the statutes do not require harm-or even a threat of harm-to the environment. Thus, convictions for these Abstract Endangerment crimes vindicate mainly administrative values.rnThis article has suggested three additional models of environmental crimes. Contrary to the Abstract Endangerment Model, these focus on environmental values. Discussion of these models, including examples of each approach, confirms that it is possible to create statutes reflecting the Concrete Endangerment, Concrete Harm, and Serious Environmental Harm models. In addition, the discussion has shown that it is desirable to provide a full spectrum of environmental crimes and to take a graduated approach to punishing the threat or reality of environmental harm. Nevertheless, both Congress and European legislatures have failed to adopt such a structure. If the approach advocated here is, in fact, where we should be heading as a society, it is time to start down that road.