Criminology Research Council grant ; (7/80)
The study involved measuring the perceptions of senior industrial management in South Australia to crimes against the environment. Following the methodologies of Sellin and Wolfgang (1964) and more recently, in Australia, Pocock and Landauer (1978; 1979; 1980), a series of 20 offence descriptions in questionnaire form was delivered to senior employees of 100 of the largest manufacturing companies in South Australia. The respondents were requested to apply a numerical score to each brief description, depending upon his/her perception of the seriousness of each offence. These were ultimately ranked 1-20 in descending order of seriousness. To establish whether certain offences were regarded as serious per se, or whether the critical factor for scoring was the particular fact situation, two questionnaires (A and B) were administered to the sample. The descriptions in A were modified slightly for B in order to provide an apparent variation of relative seriousness whilst retaining a qualitative comparability. For example:
Questionnaire A: A company owning 12 cinemas fails to install emergency exits in three of them.
Questionnaire B: A company owning 12 cinemas fails to install emergency exits in any of them.
The examples spanned a wide range of offences but included three which were environmental in nature. They were:
- Pollution of a waterway with sump oil;
- Mercury contamination of canned fish;
- Excessive emission of industrial noise.
The return rate was 92 per cent. From the responses it was possible to provide mean ranking, order of rank, mean score, order of score and relative seriousness for both questionnaires. By omitting extremes which tended to distort results it was possible to reduce all scores to a range of 1-50 and to further standardise each response by reducing to a basic minimum score of one. A median split was then produced from which some measure of the relative punitiveness of respondents could be obtained.
It was then possible to compare the attitudes of respondents to environmental offences compared with other offences. For the purposes of this summary, the mean ranking in the case of each environmental offence was discussed.
The offence of processing and selling canned fish contaminated with mercury was regarded by respondents to Questionnaire A as very serious and by respondents to Questionnaire B as an offence which could not be classified as minor. Its mean rank in Questionnaire A was 6.28, in Questionnaire B 10.45. In Questionnaire A, the seriousness of the offence was regarded comparably with offences of failing to install emergency exits in cinemas (mean rank 5.83) and illegally importing a noxious face cream (mean rank 7.06), both of which did or could result in personal harm to the public. In Questionnaire B, the less serious mercury contamination offence was ranked comparably with the offences of transporting livestock in overcrowded conditions (11.79) and failing to purchase workers' compensation insurance (8.93).
Polluting an urban waterway with sump oil in its more severe form (Questionnaire A) was generally regarded as a relatively serious offence. It received a mean rank of 7.55 and compared with the offences of receiving bribes (7.28), a breach of fruit fly regulations (8.47) and the offence of illegally importing a noxious face cream (7.06).
In Questionnaire B, the lesser form of the offence received a mean ranking of 8.91 which compared with the offence of failing to purchase adequate workers' compensation insurance policies (8.93) and, possibly, importing fruit in contravention of fruit fly regulations (7.84).
Generally, the reaction to these two environmental offences was not totally unexpected, although the author had anticipated that mean ran kings in both cases would be slightly lower than in fact occurred.
The response to the noise emission offence was, however, noteworthy. In Questionnaire A, despite the very high emission level, it received a mean rank of 14.04 which was comparable with the offence of contracting to purchase sausages with an illegally high fat content (13.57) and tampering with a motor vehicle odometer to effect a sale (14.68). In Questionnaire B, the lesser offence attracted a mean rank of 13.98 compared with the offence of obtaining credit by misrepresentation (13.77) and common assault (14.07).
It is not possible to precisely identify the reasons for the perceived seriousness (or lack thereof) of this offence. Possible contributing factors are as follows:
- difficulty of comprehending the significance of noise levels stipulated in the scenarios;
- a tendency to regard such emissions as an incident of normal industrial practice;
- in the context of the methodology, pollution and contamination offences may be more tangible, therefore quantifiable, than noise offences.
The study has proved worthwhile. However, its value would be enhanced if it were to be replicated using samples of the public and Public Service in independent studies. This would provide the opportunity to compare perceptions of different sectors of the community to the same offences.