Book Review: Environment and Enforcement. Regulation and the Social Definition of Pollution

Published date01 March 1985
Date01 March 1985
DOI10.1177/000486588501800111
AuthorD A Cole
Subject MatterBook Reviews
BOOK REVIEWS 63
methodology. In all, a good quality text book that deserves a place in the library,
including those of government departments which deal with aggressive, violent and
dangerous people.
ARNOLD
VERAA
Melbourne
Environment and Enforcement. Regulation and the Social Definition of Pollution,
Keith Hawkins, Oxford Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University Press (1984) 253pp
$17.40 (paperback).
In 1983, the Australian Department of Resources and Energy commented that
"the
provision of an uncontaminated water supply to the major cities has been a
continuing problem since the settlement of Australia". (Water 2000: Consultants
Report No 7. Water Quality Issues Department of Resources and Energy.) Clearly,
pollution of water from contemporary agricultural, industrial and other activities is
a significant factor requiring the attention of government authorities. Keith
Hawkins' latest publication is therefore a timely contribution to our understanding
of governmental decision-making in pollution management.
It is a detailed analysis of the strategies adopted by two unidentified regional
water authorities in the United Kingdom in implementing the terms of the Water
Act 1973. The author chose "participant observation" as the principal means of
collecting data and information, accompanying field officers from the two
authorities on their normal rounds of duty.
The central theme of the book isposed by the author's question: "
...
since those
who are subject to regulation have good economic reason not to comply, how is
compliance secured, given the frailty of the criminal sanction and its virtual disuse?
How is control affected where the law seeks to remedy astate of affairs? What is
the place of the formal legal process in regulatory enforcement?"
Hawkins concedes the character of the British system of water quality regulation
as being towards compliance rather than sanction, as being conciliatory rather than
penal. The principal use of punishment (or the threat of it) gives way to a system
in which an attempt is made to achieve statutory compliance through a process of
bargaining and negotiation; a system which "is characterized by ambivalence which
has both political and moral dimensions".
In this context, the author carefully examines the approaches of the field officers
and their agencies to securing adherence to statutory requirements. From the point
of establishing standards by virtue of consents to pollute through the licensing
process, the author introduces the reader to qualities and nature of field staff, the
nature of the job and the creation of cases; that is, the transformation of a physical
pollution, by reference to various other factors, into a pollution worthy of
administrative enforcement.
The latter half of Hawkins' book is devoted to an analysis of methods used to
secure compliance with particular emphasis upon strategies and negotiating tactics
employed by field officers. Ultimately, the author discusses the use of the penal
sanction in the process, concluding that "agencies paradoxically believe their efforts
to attain the wider goals of their legislative mandate to be facilitated by the extensive
(formal) non-enforcement
of
the specific offences" (author's emphasis).

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