Crimes against water: non-enforcement of state water pollution laws |
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Authors: | Andrew Franz |
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Institution: | (1) University of Pittsburgh, Greensburg, PA, USA |
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Abstract: | In the United States water pollution is a serious problem criminalized not only by the federal government, but by all states.
These laws vary greatly in content, but are widely disobeyed and universally under-enforced. Statutes, case law, histories
and journalism show “law in action” typologies of non-enforcement efficacious for analysis including: (1) jurisdiction issues
like federal pre-emption, inter-state compacts, and constitutional limitations; (2) legislative issues such as failure to
legislate, or legislating ineffectively; (3) agency issues, including administrative obstacles, delegation, power vacuums,
procedure, and “agency capture”; (4) policing issues like apathy, under-funding/training, jurisdictional confusion, and “following
the path of least resistance”; (5) prosecutorial issues, including isolation, intimidation, and ideological priority bias;
(6) trial and appellate court issues, including unclear culpability, erroneous holdings, bias, and lack of judicial independence;
and (7) citizen, victim, and defendant issues, including legal intellectual influence, environmentalist criminalization apathy,
industry lobbying, environmental justice, reporting failures, self-policing, ethics and flight. The conclusion is non-enforcement
in this area of criminal law shows that while federally there may exist a relatively consistent, content neutral enforcement
system, at the state level resistance to enforcement is seen across a number of fronts. Ultimately, states can be seens as
colonized frontiers servicing venture capitalism, consistent with a “race to the bottom.” |
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