Sanctioning of environmental crime in the European Union: The case of Flanders, Belgium

Abstract

The development of the criminal sanctioning track in the EU is a prominent policy issue. Previous studies of the actual use of criminal sanctions in the member states are very important since the gap between the law and practice can be very wide. Policy makers and law enforcers are confronted with a lack of empirical data on the actual use of criminal law to sanction environmental offenses. In this study, we use information stored in the Environmental LawForce database, which is a database of environmental sanctioning by criminal courts in Flanders, Belgium. The study distinguishes three types of offenders: companies, individuals prosecuted for acts committed as part of their professional activities, and individuals prosecuted for acts committed as part of their private lives. Based on previous theoretical insights, we investigate when we expect the environmental sanctions to be similar or different across the three groups of offenders. In particular, we assess the differences and similarities across the sanctioning of environmental offenses committed by companies, professional individuals and private individuals in Flanders.

review contribution to environmental crime

“…This signifies that the cluster was formed from relatively recent documents through the period when the number of documents in this field began to rise sharply. The articles in this cluster generally reported on the various activities that constitute environmental crime or violations and also the corresponding punishments that follow (Billiet et al, 2018;Favarin & Aziani, 2020;Howes et al, 2017;Lynch et al, 2020;(Wortley & Townsley, 2016). The second largest cluster #1 had 41 members and was labeled illegal sea turtle hunting.…”

“…The focus of environmental crime places much emphasis on animal poaching. When animal poachers are left to continually poach animals without going unpunished, these animals will go extinct (Billiet et al, 2018;Rizzolo et al, 2017). The third cluster #2, environmental management, had the second-highest silhouette score among the list in the table showing high reliability of co-cited references in this cluster.…”

Stealing Like Artists: Using Court Records to Conduct Quantitative Research on Corporate Environmental Crimes

“…There are countries outside the United States that prosecute companies for environmental crimes based on strict liability requirements (Gobert & Punch, 2003). We cite below (in Table 1) a recent study by Billiet and colleagues (2018), which examined criminal sanctioning for CECs in Belgium.…”