Public expectation and environmental enforcement: distortion or democracy? Part I

✍ Scribed by Paula de Prez

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 62 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1067-6058
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0941(199911/12)11:6<224::aid-elm153>3.0.co;2-w

✦ Synopsis

T)he police tend to select law violators not according to legal prescriptions alone, but also according to how closely enforcement approximates the expectations of the community.'' 1 This article explores the tension which exists between the need for the Environment Agency (the `Agency') to focus its enforcement efforts on incidents which present the greatest threat to the environment and the political need to appear responsive to public concern. It is sometimes the case that incidents which arouse public feeling would not ordinarily be considered as priorities for enforcement. The two parts of this article discuss respectively, the extent to which public feeling features in enforcement decision making and the arguments for and against public feeling being a legitimate enforcement consideration.

The legal and policy preference for sound science

In the context of planning law matters, public perceptions of risk have recently been held to 224