Public transgression of environmental law: A preliminary study

Environmental crime, a relatively new category of criminality, has recently attracted the attention of criminologists. While large corporations and criminal organizations have been viewed as the major environmental violators and subjected to study, other groups involved in environmental crimes have been generally overlooked. The present study interviewed both offenders and investigators involved in environmental crime, reviewed a sample of case reports of environmental crimes and surveyed a sample of the general public. The results indicate that ordinary citizens also engage in environmental lawbreaking, although their violations are basically trivial in nature. The findings of this study suggest that education, instead of criminal law enforcement, would be an effective way of preventing this widespread environmental criminality of the public.