Samenvatting

Environmental crime has serious consequences for nature, the safety and health of individuals, and the economy. Environmental crime includes the illegal discharge of waste into soil or water, drug waste dumping (toxic waste from the production of synthetic drugs that is dumped in nature conservation areas), illegal emissions by heavy and/or chemical industries, manure fraud and the illegal trafficking in (toxic) waste. In the Netherlands alone, the damage caused by environmental crime amounts to several billion euros per year. The law is an important tool for reducing or preventing environmental crime. However, research done in recent years shows that there is insufficient insight into the system of supervision and enforcement to address environmental crime. For example, more insight is needed into the functioning of and any bottlenecks in the criminal justice chain as regards addressing environmental law transgressions. Research must show which criminal law of administrative law response or sanction is best suited for specific types of environmental crime and types of offenders. In this contribution, we first focus on the administrative and criminal law contexts of dealing with transgressions of environmental law. Hereafter, we consider the question of what is known from past research about the functioning of the system of supervision of environmental law in the Netherlands. Next, we reflect on the question: What do we actually know about the effects of (criminal) sanctions on environmental crime (what works?)? We conclude this contribution with a short conclusion and a call for more research into this important topic. We hope that such research may contribute to a better understanding of the effects of legal sanctions and the achievement of policy goals in the environmental law domain.