Background

General outline

The ENVIRONMENTAL LAWFORCE DATABASE is an important output from the research project “Environmental Law Enforcement: a Comparison of Practice in the Criminal and the Administrative Tracks” (March 2007 – March 2011) financed by the Institute for Encouraging Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT).  More information on the research project can be found elsewhere on this website.

With respect to the criminal sanctioning track the database documents breaches of the environmental pollution law that applied in the Flemish Region (Belgium). The data collection focused on the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal in Gent. This jurisdiction included seven courts of first instance: Brugge, Dendermonde, Gent, Ieper, Kortrijk, Oudenaarde and Veurne. All judgments regarding environmental offences from 2003, 2004, 2004 and 2006 as well as the appeal judgments from 2003 up to 2007 are included in the dataset. Moreover, the dataset also includes information on the pre-court decisions, i.e. the treatment of cases by the public prosecutor’s offices. Specifically, the dataset includes discretionary dismissals and settlement offers made by the public prosecutor’s offices in Gent and Kortrijk following cases that arrived in 2005 and discretionary dismissals and settlement offers made by the public prosecutor’s office in Ieper decided on in 2005.

With respect to the administrative sanctioning track the fining practice based on the Environmental Enforcement Act 1999 in the Brussels Capital Region was studied. The database includes the decisions to impose and not to impose fines made by the Brussels Institute of Environmental Management (BIM) in 2004, 2005 and 2006 as well as the appeal decisions by the Environmental College from 2004 up to 2007. With respect to the administrative preliminary sanctioning track, the administrative discretionary dismissals in BIM-cases from 2004 till 2006 are included in the dataset.

Frequently asked questions – FAQ

  • What is the Environmental Lawforce project? Read more…
  • Which environmental legislation is included in the analysis of criminal sanctioning? Read more…
  • Which environmental legislation is included in the analysis of administrative sanctioning? Read more…
  • Which type of decisions are included in the database? Read more…
  • Which type of decisions are not included in the database? Read more…
  • What are the temporal and regional limitations of the criminal data? Read more…
  • What are the temporal and regional limitations of the administrative data? Read more…
  • How are decisions imported in our database? What is the structure of the data? Read more…
  • How many decisions are included in the database? Read more…

 

Publications

The publications that use the dataset and were written within the project or in its wake can be found elsewhere on this website. They include the following:

  • Blondiau, Billiet & Rousseau (2015). Comparison of criminal and administrative penalties for environmental offences.
  • Billiet, Blondiau & Rousseau (2014). Punishing environmental crimes : an empirical study from lower courts to the court of appeal.
  • Billiet & Rousseau (2014). How real is the threat of imprisonment for environmental crime?
  • Rousseau & Blondiau (2014). Act-based versus harm-based sanctions for environmental offenders.
  • Billiet & Rousseau (2013). Environmental crime: assessing illegal benefits.
  • Blondiau (2013). An economic view on environmental law enforcement.
  • Billiet & Rousseau (2012). Environmental crime: forfeiture of illegal benefits in numbers.
  • Billiet, Blondiau & Rousseau (2011). Environmental crime in the criminal judge’s policy: punishing between Haus and Brundtland.
  • Billiet & Broeckhoven (2011). Environmental criminal judges safeguarding the future: an empirical profile of the exploitation cessation order.
  • Billiet (2010). Punishing environmental offences: the fining officer as third player on the game.
  • Billiet, Rousseau, Meeus & Balcaen (2010). Transactions for environmental offences in Flanders.
  • Blondiau & Rousseau (2010). The impact of the judicial objective function on the enforcement of environmental standards.
  • Billiet, Rousseau, Balcaen, Meeus, Styns, De Meyer, Vander Beken & Lavrysen (2009). Environmental crime as handled by criminal courts and fining administrations: facts from Flanders and Brussels.
  • Billiet, Vander Beken, Rousseau, Balcaen, Meeus, Styns, De Meyer & Lavrysen (2009). Environmental crime: facts about punishment.
  • Billiet, Rousseau, Balcaen, Meeus, Styns, De Meyer, Vander Beken & Lavrysen (2009). Environmental law enforcement: a database to research the criminal and the administrative sanctioning practices.

The oldest publication explains to what research ends and how (method) the database was build: Billiet, Rousseau, Balcaen, Meeus, Styns, De Meyer, Vander Beken & Lavrysen (2009), Environmental law enforcement: a database to research the criminal and the administrative sanctioning practices, nrs. 6 – 16.