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Social Time and Environmental Criminal Law

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Social Time and Environmental Criminal Law SOCIAL TIME AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMINAL LAW by MATTHEW JOHN WILLIAM GREIFE (Under the Direction of Mark Cooney) ABSTRACT When corporations are prosecuted for violating federal environmental criminal laws the punishments vary widely. Some companies are fined millions of dollars, others only a couple thousands for violating the same laws. This dissertation uses Donald Black’s (2011) theory of moral time in an attempt to explain the variance in punishment previously mentioned. Black’s (2011) theory argues that changes in social relationships or movements of social time cause all conflict – including legal conflicts. Movements of social time occur, for example, when people become more or less intimate with one another or see an increase or decrease in wealth. The greater and faster a movement of social time is, the more conflict it will cause. The greatest conflicts will thus attract the largest amounts of social control. Black’s (2011) theory predicts that when a company violates an environmental criminal law and causes the greatest movements of social time, those companies will be punished the most severely. This dissertation finds moderate support for Black’s (2011) theory. INDEX WORDS: Social Control, Environmental Law, Corporate Crime, Environmental Crime, Moral Time SOCIAL TIME AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMINAL LAW by MATTHEW JOHN WILLIAM GREIFE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2016 © 2016 Matthew John William Greife All Rights Reserved SOCIAL TIME AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMINAL LAW by MATTHEW JOHN WILLIAM GREIFE Major Professor: Mark Cooney Committee: Tom McNulty Jim Coverdill Mark Pogrebin Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2016 DEDICATION I dedicate my entire PhD to the Venor family, Mark Pogrebin, Paul Stretesky, Jennifer Cross, Tara O’Conner-Shelly, my family and friends that supported me on this journey and most importantly to the men who fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Jim Coverdill for agreeing to be on this committee at the last minute. Thanks to Mark Pogrebin who has been my emotional crutch during this project. Thanks to Tom McNulty for helping guide me through some of the more intricate and nuanced statistical analysis required for this project. Finally, thanks to Mark Cooney for chairing the committee. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................................x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 A Sociology of Environmental Criminal Law .........................................................6 Directional Roadmap ...............................................................................................9 2 CHAPTER 2: LEGAL FRAMEWORK .....................................................................12 Environmental Law .................................................................................................12 Clean Water Act ......................................................................................................13 Clean Air Act ..........................................................................................................17 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act .............................................................19 Non-Environmental Law Criminal Acts .................................................................22 Sentencing the Corporate Offender ........................................................................24 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................27 3 CHAPTER 3: CONCEPTUAL DEFINITION AND LITERATURE REVIEW ........28 Conceptual Definition of Corporate Environmental Crime ...................................29 Defining White Collar, Corporate and Environmental Crime ...............................29 Offender Based Definitions ...................................................................................29 vi Offense Based Definitions .......................................................................................31 Typological Approaches ..........................................................................................32 Environmental Crime ...............................................................................................32 Corporate Crime Definition .....................................................................................34 Corporate Environmental Crime Definition ............................................................34 Literature Review .....................................................................................................35 Why Do Corporations Commit Crime .....................................................................35 Law and Society Scholarship ...................................................................................40 Deterrence Based Models ........................................................................................40 Cooperative Based Models ......................................................................................42 How are Corporations Punished ..............................................................................45 Law and Economics and Corporate Environmental Crime .....................................47 Environmental Justice Studies .................................................................................49 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................53 4 CHAPTER 4: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ........................................................56 Pure Sociology .......................................................................................................56 Social Time ............................................................................................................60 Crime, Punishment and Law as Movements of Social Time ..................................62 Environmental Crime and Punishment as Social Time ..........................................66 The Pollution, Environmental Degradation and Resource Overuse Presumption ..70 Conceptual Shortcomings of Moral Time ................................................................72 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................75 vii 5 CHAPTER 5: Dataset Creation, Variable Operationalization, Conceptualization and Hypotheses ...................................................................................................................77 The Data Set ...........................................................................................................86 Baseline Hypothesis: Pollution as a Movement of Social Time ...........................82 Pollution Causing Movements of Relational Time ................................................88 Pollution Causing Movements of Vertical Time ...................................................93 Law Preventing Future Movements of Social Time ..............................................96 Conclusion .............................................................................................................99 6 CHAPTER 6: ANALYSIS .......................................................................................101 Crime as a Movement of Social Time .................................................................103 Crime Causing Movements of Relational Time ..................................................103 Crime Causing Movements of Vertical Time ......................................................108 Law Preventing Movements of Social Time .......................................................112 Supplemental Analysis: Why Law is Created to Prevent Future Movements of Social Time ..........................................................................................................118 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................121 7 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION ..................................................................................123 Summary of Findings ...........................................................................................123 Limitations of the Dissertation.............................................................................129 Future Directions for Research ............................................................................135 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................138 APPENDICES A APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................155 viii B APPENDIX B ............................................................................................................157 C APPENDIX C ............................................................................................................158 LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1: CWA Punishment Framework .........................................................................................16
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