The Politics of RCRA Criminal Enforcement

Violations of federal environmental laws governing hazardous and solid wastes are typically remedied via civil methods, except in the case of crimes involving significant harm and culpable conduct, which can merit criminal prosecution. With historically varied commitments to environmental enforcement, we would generally expect substantive increases in prosecutions and penalties for these crimes under Democratic, as opposed to Republican presidents, but very little is known about the criminal enforcement of hazardous and solid waste crimes generally or how they vary under different partisan regimes. Through content analysis of 2,728 criminal prosecutions resulting from U.S. EPA criminal investigations, 1983-2021, we select and parcel out all 409 prosecutions occurring under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) across Republican and Democratic presidents for comparison and analysis. Results show some 745 defendants prosecuted, receiving over 7,100 months of incarceration, 18,400 months of probation, and $315 million in fines and other monetary penalties.

We find penalties to increase under Democratic presidents, but not as significantly as would be generally expected, and trends in penalties and prosecutions seem to peak towards the end of the Clinton Era, perhaps reflecting a longer-term trend of financial disinvestment that has mostly cut across parties since.