Book Description

Until recently, both the public and industry considered waste to be a common term describing all types of garbage, making no distinction between fairly innocuous and dangerous forms of waste. If business firms were caught dumping their wastes, it was treated more as a nuisance than as a criminal act; the common images of the criminal and the dumper were worlds apart. In Dangerous Ground, Donald J. Rebovich closes this perceptual gap, providing essential information and analysis of hazardous waste crime and the hazardous waste criminal. Rebovich's portrait of the criminal dumper is a surprising one. Most commonly, he is an ordinary, profit-motivated businessman who operates in an environment in which syndicated crime activity may be present but by no means pervasive. The author's research uncovers a criminal world of the hazardous waste offender unlike any theorized about in the past. It is a universe in which the intensity, duration, and methods of the criminal act will be more likely determined by the criminal opportunities available in the legitimate marketplace than by the orders of a controlling crime syndicate. It is also a world where one's criminal position is often determined by aspects of employee trust, antagonism, and solicitation in the workplace. Dangerous Ground places the new criminal culture in illuminating perspective by detailing the basic elements of the history and character of hazardous waste generation, its legitimate disposal, and efforts to control illegitimate disposal. Government response to the problem is documented; its failures as well as its successes. The author concludes by presenting his analysis of what the future holds for this crime area and valuable recommendations for enforcement. Dangerous Ground is the most complete and up-to-date account of hazardous waste crime available. It will be of interest to law enforcement officials, criminologists, environmental scientists, and specialists in waste management.