Toxic Intent

Environmental crimes cause serious harm to humans, animals, and the natural environment in the United States. Yet our understanding of how they are investigated, prosecuted, and punished is at best fragmented and incomplete. What crimes has the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Criminal Enforcement program investigated and federal prosecutors pursued since the institutionalization of the criminal enforcement apparatus? What major themes do we see in those prosecutions? What punishments are meted out to environmental criminals? Does this process have much deterrent value? Toxic Intent provides readers with answers to these questions, offering a comprehensive account of how the federal government punishes serious environmental crimes in the United States. Based on the authors' detailed analysis and review of EPA criminal investigations and cases from 1983 to the present, readers will come away with a deep understanding of environmental enforcement in the United States.