Date of Award

January 2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Criminal Justice

First Advisor

Adam Matz

Abstract

This dissertation explores the recidivism rates of organizational offenders convicted of federal environmental crimes. Individual recidivism has received considerable attention from re-searchers over the years. This is not so with organization recidivism. This dissertation aims at put-ting greater light on this subject. The study focuses on environmental crime because of the critical need to preserve the earth’s ability to sustain life. Federal environmental criminal prosecution da-ta maintained by the EPA was the study population. The population included prosecutions of organizational offenders from 1994 to 2013. The total number of organizational prosecutions was 73625 and the total number of organizational offenders convicted was 788. While the study’s main aim was to provide a descriptive analysis of the recidivism rates of organizational offenders convicted of federal environmental crimes, it also provides analysis of the organizational offenders, their statutory violations and the sanctions meted out by the courts. The analysis yielded recidivism rates far lower than those that typically apply to individual offenders. These results raised a number of questions and observations that should be of interest to policy makers and future researchers.

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