DISCRETION AND THE CRIMINALIZATION (ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
It is concluded that while broad prosecutorial discretion is justified on economic efficiency grounds, extending criminal sanctions to outcomes lacking violator intent or control is likely to result in the over-criminalization of environmental law. Equally troubling, if judicial discretion is used to impose significant downward departures from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the trivialization of CWA enforcement is inevitable. Thus, overzealous prosecution runs the risk of creating over-deterrence and stripping criminal sanctions of their moral stigma, while lax criminal sanctioning undermines deterrence objectives and minimizes the importance of violating federal environmental law itself. Policy implications of recent sanctioning trends, as well as future research needs, are also explored