Dangerous Ground: The World of Hazardous Waste Crime

For many years, if businesses were caught dumping waste, it was treated more as a nuisance than as a crime; the common images of the criminal and the dumper were worlds apart. In Dangerous Ground, originally published in 1992, Donald J. Rebovich closes this perceptual gap, providing essential information about and analysis of hazardous waste crime and the hazardous waste criminal. This paperback edition includes new material, noting important changes since the book’s original publication.

Rebovich finds that the criminal dumper is usually an ordinary businessman. The author’s research discovers that hazardous waste disposal crimes are more likely driven by the cost of legitimate disposal options, rather than by organized crime figures. It is also a world where one’s criminal position is often determined by industry connections and personal relationships.

Dangerous Ground places the criminal dumping culture in perspective by detailing the basics of hazardous waste generation, its legitimate disposal, government responses, and efforts to control illegal disposal. An epilogue concludes with an analysis of new threats to our environment posed by gas and oil drilling, declining federal prosecutions, progressive sentencing for offenders, and recommendations on how the global community can effectively address international environmental crime.