Carole M. Billiet, Sandra Rousseau, Annelies Balcaen, Roel Meeus, Karel Styns, Geert De Meyer, Tom Vander Beken & Luc Lavrysen, Milieurechtshandhaving: een databestand voor onderzoek naar de penale en bestuurlijke sanctioneringspraktijk [Environmental law enforcement: a database to research the criminal and administrative sanctioning practices], Tijdschrift voor Milieurecht 2009/02, 128-150
The cornerstone of the Environmental Lawforce research project (2007-2011) is a database covering the whole sanctioning trajectory within both the criminal and the administrative track (from notice of violation to the execution of sanctions, thus encompassing, amongst other decisions, the discretionary dismissal decision, the transaction/settlement offer and the decision to impose one or more sanctions). The present article focuses on this database, which is file based (no aggregate data). It clarifies the concept and construction of the database and offers a first view on the empirical research that can be achieved with it, presenting descriptive statistics regarding the sanctioning practice in Flemish criminal courts and the Brussels fining administration.
Full publication (Dutch) here.