Enforcing Pollution Control Regulation: Strengthening Sanctions and Improving Deterrence

Monitoring and enforcement issues must be analysed when determining the effectiveness of pollution control regulation, and clearly influence choices about how to regulate. This book demonstrates how an economic analysis of law enforcement can generate important insights into how best to enforce pollution control regulation. It seeks to provide a clear and accessible way into the law and economics literature on enforcement. More specifically, it uses Gary Becker’s deterrence model which, by differentiating between two enforcement variables (namely the probability of apprehension and conviction and the severity of sanction), facilitates a comparison of the effectiveness of different enforcement tools in inducing desirable behaviour. As such, it provides a valuable analytical tool in considering how best to pursue cost-effective enforcement.
Major themes to be addressed include Becker’s deterrence model and expansions thereof, reasons for compliance, environmental enforcement strategies and the importance of a deterrence threat and formal pollution control law enforcement mechanisms such as prosecution and criminal sanctions, administrative mechanisms and civil liability. The book argues that in pursuing cost-effective enforcement much can be learned from examining enforcement practices in different jurisdictions, and to this end the author examines pollution control laws, enforcement strategies and sanctions in Australia, Canada and England and Wales.
The book makes an important contribution to existing literature on environmental law enforcement, but its value extends beyond this. The theoretical framework adopted and the range of issues discussed make it of interest to regulatory and public law scholars more generally.