IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/20464_22.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Non-criminal enforcement and environmental inequality in the United States

In: Handbook on Inequality and the Environment

Author

Listed:
  • Tara O’Connor Shelley
  • Anne E. Egelston

Abstract

This chapter reviews the nascent scholarly literature to determine if environmental enforcement of non-criminal violations is associated with and/or contributes to environmental inequalities of vulnerable groups within society as identified by race, ethnicity, income, poverty, or socio-economic status. Access to decision-making and/or having meaningful influence is not distributed equally among groups in environmental governance, which is also a source of inequality. This review of existing research incorporates legal mechanisms exercised by state actors that include inspections, enforcement actions, and civil lawsuits involving the: Clean Air Act (CAA), Clean Water Act (CWA), Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). To date, this literature does not provide consistent answers concerning the relationship between enforcement of non-criminal violations and environmental inequality. Methodological differences, variability in how researchers operationalize inequality and enforcement, and the environmental law of focus resulted in a patchwork of findings and occasionally contradictory results.

Suggested Citation

  • Tara O’Connor Shelley & Anne E. Egelston, 2023. "Non-criminal enforcement and environmental inequality in the United States," Chapters, in: Michael A. Long & Michael J. Lynch & Paul B. Stretesky (ed.), Handbook on Inequality and the Environment, chapter 22, pages 383-404, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:20464_22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781800881136/9781800881136.00035.xml
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:20464_22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.