Pierce Greenberg publishes article on federal environmental crime prosecution patterns in Nature Sustainability
Pierce Greenberg from Clemson University recently published an article in Nature Sustainability titled “Social factors shape federal environmental crime prosecution patterns in the USA.” As he notes, enforcement of environmental laws and regulations is critical to achieving a cleaner environment and alleviating inequitable distributions of environmental harms. He and his coauthors examined the geographic patterning of US federal environmental crime prosecutions from 2011 to 2020, finding that counties with higher levels of socioeconomic status have more environmental criminal prosecutions, on average, while environmental conditions such as air and water quality have no effect on environmental crime prosecution patterns.