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Punishment And Preventing Pollution In Japan: Is American-Style Criminal Enforcement The Solution?, Robert G. Kondrat

Washington International Law Journal

Both Japan and the United States face the ongoing threat of intentional and preventable pollution. From 1970 until the mid-1980s, Japan utilized its environmental crime laws to punish and prevent intentional and preventable acts of pollution. After this period, however, the number of environmental crime arrests and prosecutions in Japan declined. In contrast, since the 1980s, the United States has continued to expand the number of prosecutors and investigators dedicated to the enforcement of environmental crime laws. These divergent trends can be explained by the different pollution histories, enforcement personnel structures, regulatory strategies, and case law of the two countries. …