Carole M. Billiet, Bestraffing van milieucriminaliteit: de beboetingsambtenaar als derde speler op het veld [Punishing environmental offences: the fining officer as third player on the game], in Luc Lavrysen (ed.), Het milieuhandhavingsdecreet in de praktijk. Een jaar nieuwe milieuhandhavingspraktijk onder de loep [The Environmental Enforcement Decree in practice. Taking a closer look at one year of new vintage enforcement], Brugge, die Keure, 2010, 338p.
After an analysis of the new administrative fining system that entered into force with the Flemish Environmental Enforcement Decree and its government orders, Carole M. Billiet turns to the processing of environmental files in the criminal court system. She discusses the way environmental files were processed between the prosecution and the bench and how the existing patterns could be influenced with the arrival of a third player – the fining officer –on the game. For this analysis, she uses empirical data concerning the intake and processing of the files throughout the criminal court system that have been gathered in the dataset of the Environmental Lawforce project. With the new administrative fining system, the public prosecutor becomes more than ever the key player in the punishment of environmental crime. His views on how to manage the incoming files thus have far-reaching effects on the resulting environmental law enforcement.
Full publication (Dutch) here.