Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
Publication Date
Winter 2013
ISSN
0885-2731
Page Number
231
Keywords
crime control, regulatory policy, environmental compliance
Disciplines
Criminal Law | Environmental Law | Law
Abstract
Corporate illegality is often attributed to greed by corporate managers and insufficient legal safeguards. Underlying this argument is an explicit critique of corporate crime regulatory systems. Yet there is little systematic investigation of the relative merits of different types or components of crime-control strategies; research comparing more punitive command-and- control strategies with self-regulatory approaches is particularly lacking. In this Article, we assess these crime prevention-and-control mechanisms in the context of individual and situational risk factors that may increase the likelihood of illegal behavior in the environmental arena. We use data drawn from two groups of business managers who participated in a factorial survey (using vignettes) measuring their intentions to participate in two types of environmental offenses. Generally, results show that the most effective regulatory levers are (1) credible legal sanctions and (2) the certainty and severity of informal discovery by significant others in the firm. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for regulatory policy and strategy, and for efforts to account for the role of social norms in corporate environmental compliance.
Recommended Citation
Michael P. Vandenbergh, Sally S. Simpson, Carole Gibbs, Melissa Rorie, Lee Ann Slocum, and Mark A. Cohen,
An Empirical Assessment of Corporate Environmental Crime-Control Stragies, 103 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 231
(2013)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/1506