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Comparison of criminal and administrative penalties for environmental offenses

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Abstract

We conduct a counterfactual analysis to measure the treatment difference between administrative and criminal enforcement of environmental violations. Our aim is to control for the selection bias effect and make a comparison of how similar offenses are treated in both enforcement tracks. This analysis is relevant to answer the question of how deterrence and welfare in a combined criminal-administrative enforcement system compare with an enforcement system relying on criminal penalization only. This is an important question given the observed shift towards two-track penalization systems, combining administrative and criminal penalization, for environmental enforcement in the European Union. We apply matching techniques on a unique dataset of environmental enforcement cases to control for sample selection bias. We match different enforcement cases, based on case characteristics and estimate the average treatment effect for these cases. Overall, we find that the marginal penalty is slightly lower in administrative enforcement compared to criminal enforcement.

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Notes

  1. For an overview of theoretical literature extending the optimal law enforcement framework, see Garoupa (1997) or Polinsky and Shavell (2007). For a view on empirical literature, one can consult Levitt and Miles (2007).

  2. Cooter and Ulen (2007) also discuss conditions for applying different types of enforcement procedures.

  3. For an overview of the theoretical literature on statistical matching, see Heckman et al. (1999) or Imbens and Wooldridge (2009). For an application in regulatory impact analysis, see Milimet and List (2004). For some examples of matching in environmental economics, see Ferraro et al. (2007) or Deng et al. (2011).

  4. Belgium is a federal state with three regions: the Flemish Region (Flanders), the Walloon Region and the Brussels-Capital Region (Brussels).

  5. Next we use the term ‘acquittal’ to represent acquittals in the criminal track as well as technical acquittals in the administrative track. We use ‘opportunity acquittal’ to present opportunity acquittals in the administrative track.

  6. Some 60 % of the Flemish environmental cases end with a dismissal and 14 % with a settlement (Billiet et al. 2013). The remainder is merged with previously existing files or referred to other courts.

  7. We check whether this aggregation in one measure p(X) results in a balanced set for all the covariates X.

  8. We can correct for a possible difference in relevance of a particular legislation/type of offense. If we include this information in the propensity score indicator. In addition, Billiet et al. (2009) found that regional disparities in terms of the offended environmental regulations are not as large as one may intuitively expect. They observed that breaches of the environmental permit decrees and the waste decrees are quite common in both regions. Besides these, a large share of cases concern noise nuisance in both enforcement tracks.

  9. Also, alternative penalties such as community service are applied in fewer than 2 % of all cases.

  10. The observation that a higher p is more effective in providing deterrence, then follows from the fact that most law violators are risk-loving individuals.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Stef Proost, Timo Goeschl, Donatella Porrini, Tom Ulen and participants of PE-ETE seminars at KU Leuven as well as participants of the EALE conference in Hamburg for providing useful comments. We would also like to thank the participants of the project ‘Environmental law enforcement: a comparison of practice between the administrative and the criminal track’ for collecting the data used in this paper. This project was funded by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology of the Flemish Government, ‘Strategic Basic Research’ program. The experimenting and investigation conducted for this article comply with the current Belgian laws.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. TM Leuven, Diestsesteenweg 57, 3010, Louvain, Belgium

    Thomas Blondiau

  2. U.Gent, CM&ER, Universiteitsstraat 4, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Carole M. Billiet

  3. CEDON, KU Leuven, Warmoesberg 26, 1000, Brussels, Belgium

    Sandra Rousseau

Authors
  1. Thomas Blondiau
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  2. Carole M. Billiet
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  3. Sandra Rousseau
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Blondiau.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 9.

Table 9 Estimation of ‘gravity indicators’ using a probit model with prison sentence as dependent variable
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Appendix 2

See Table 10.

Table 10 Estimation of propensity score value using a probit model with administrative enforcement as dependent variable
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Blondiau, T., Billiet, C.M. & Rousseau, S. Comparison of criminal and administrative penalties for environmental offenses. Eur J Law Econ 39, 11–35 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-014-9473-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-014-9473-9

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