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Article: The new environmental hazard: prison. (criminal prosecution of executives)
- Article from:
- Risk Management
- Article date:
- June 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Risk Management Society Publishing, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Lawyers at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) say that the much-threatened explosion of criminal prosecutions for violations of environmental statutes will begin in earnest in 1994. Pursuant to the Pollution Prosecution Act of 1990, Congress has authorized the EPA to hire as many as 200 criminal investigators by 1995, and federal criminal prosecutions, while certainly not overwhelming in number, have increased more than 300 percent in the last 10 years, with criminal penalties totalling over $260 million in fines and 446 years in prison for environmental criminals.
What makes the prospect of criminal prosecution for an environmental crime so ...