Does the Concentration of the Treadmill of Production Predict US EPA Violations Across States?

• In Event: White Collar and Organized Crime: The Framing and Boundaries of Deviance

Abstract

In recent years green criminologists have employed the treadmill of production (ToP) literature to develop explanations for green/environmental crimes and to explore how the ToP affects the enforcement of environmental regulations. That view, however, has not been widely examined empirically. The present study assesses the green criminology-ToP argument by examining whether the distribution of one measure of the ToP, the concentration of manufacturing facilities across US states, is related to five different measures of environmental violations and noncompliance across states for 2015 using US EPA ECHO data. Controlling for alternative arguments suggested in criminological and in other literatures – that enforcement deters environmental offenders reducing environmental violations and that environmental offending may reflect economic development– we find an effect for manufacturing on three of the five measures of environmental violations and noncompliance measured as rates. The implications and limitations of these findings and further research are discussed.

Authors

• Michael J. Lynch, University of South Florida

• Paul B. Stretesky, Northumbria University

• Michael A. Long, Northumbria University

• Kimberly L. Barrett, Eastern Michigan University