Administrative segregation revisited: Community influences and the sanctioning of environmental white collar crime

White-collar crime is often "administratively segregated" in that these offenses primarily receive administrative or civil sanctions as opposed to criminal sanctioning. This dissertation examines the factors which account for "administrative segregation" for a particularly onerous white-collar crime--environmental offenses. Specifically, I examine the utility of a contextual model to explain the impact of urban activism, bureaucratic fragmentation, economic vitality, federal enforcement activity and offender blameworthiness on sanctioning activity by subnational actors. To explore this model, I use a qualitative comparative analysis which examines the impact of these five dimensions on sanctioning behavior across a number of contaminated communities in a Midwestern region. Further, the analysis examines the impact of the federal Superfund program on the sanctioning behavior of subnational actors. This analysis indicates that, prior to the Superfund program, punitive sanctions primarily result from offender blameworthiness coupled with either bureaucratic consolidation or economic vitality to offset the absence of both federal enforcement and urban activism. In the post-Superfund era, punitive sanctions stemmed largely from offender blameworthiness coupled with urban activism. On the other hand, for both the pre- and post-Superfund eras, nonpunitive sanctioning largely stemmed from limited blameworthiness, the absence of urban activism and a lack of economic vitality. Finally, the timing and determinants of each sanction type suggest the limited impact of the Superfund program and point to possible refinements of the model. These findings suggest that "administrative segregation" as reflected in sanctioning punitiveness is intimately tied to the political and economic constraints faced by localities confronting environmental offenders.