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Regulatory Enforcement and the Criminal Law

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Responding to Environmental Crimes

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Green Criminology ((PSGC))

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Abstract

The offences in the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) are a regulatory enforcement mechanism, being one way in which local authorities can respond to breaches of the Act. But they also rely on the criminal law for determining whether a breach has occurred and what penalty, if any, should be imposed. The first half of the chapter weaves its way through regulatory enforcement theory, considering matters such as why some regulatees comply with rules and others do not, how a regulator should detect and respond to non-compliance and why sanctions should be imposed. The second half of the chapter starts at this same point—why sanctions should be imposed—but considers the question from a criminal law perspective. It then considers, while still on this perspective, when and how prosecutions should be undertaken and when and how the criminal law should be employed. The chapter concludes by setting out the framework against which the RMA’s offences are assessed, namely whether the offences are effective and whether they are being used appropriately.

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  1. Faculty of Law, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Mark Wright

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Wright, M. (2022). Regulatory Enforcement and the Criminal Law. In: Responding to Environmental Crimes. Palgrave Studies in Green Criminology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89250-0_3

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