Verifying and Augmenting EPA's DOCKET Database of Civil Judicial Enforcement Statistics

验证和扩充 EPA 民事司法执法统计 DOCKET 数据库

• 批准号: 9910788
• 负责人: Mark Atlas
• 金额: $ 1.38万
• 依托单位: North Carolina State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-09-15 至 2001-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9910788&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Verifying; Augmenting; EPA; DOCKET; Database

One of the most contentious areas of environmental social science research over the last 10 years has been "environmental justice," a movement promoting the fair treatment of people of all races, incomes and cultures with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws and policies. Various studies have been done in the last several years on whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") discriminates against minorities in its civil judicial enforcement cases by imposing lower penalties on violators in disproportionately minority areas. These studies used data from EPA's DOCKET database, which contains records of EPA's civil enforcement cases since 1972.Subsequent studies by this project's principal investigator focused substantial attention on the quality of the DOCKET data. DOCKET data were found to have errors or omissions in the penalty amounts, descriptions and locations of the violations, and relevant dates. Obviously, if the data are inaccurate or incomplete, they cannot be used reliably in analyses. The purpose of this project is to verify and augment DOCKET data so that future research, whether environmental justice-related or otherwise, can use the data with greater flexibility and more assurance of their validity. The information in each of approximately 2,400 DOCKET cases will be checked against the available source documents (e.g., consent decrees or judicial opinions) to correct and augment DOCKET. Furthermore, databases from EPA and elsewhere will be used to identify the latitude and longitude coordinates of the violation locations so that future studies can use their precise locations. The final result of this process will be an improved DOCKET database that can be used for more reliable and sophisticated statistical analyses of EPA's enforcement processes.

在过去的十年中，环境社会科学研究最有争议的领域之一是“环境正义”，这是一项运动，促进了对各种种族，收入和文化的公平对待法律和政策。 在过去的几年中，已经对美国环境保护署（“ EPA”）进行了各种研究，是否通过对少数民族不成比例的违规者施加较低的罚款来歧视其民用司法执法案件中的少数群体。 这些研究使用了EPA案卷数据库中的数据，该数据包含EPA自1972年以来的民事执法案件的记录。该项目的首席研究人员进行了详细研究，重点关注案卷数据的质量。 发现案件数据在罚款金额，违法行为的罚款金额，描述和相关日期中都有错误或遗漏。 显然，如果数据不准确或不完整，则不能在分析中可靠地使用它们。 该项目的目的是验证和增强案卷数据，以便未来的研究（无论是与环境司法有关还是其他相关的研究）都可以使用更大的灵活性和更加保证其有效性的数据。 大约2400个案卷案件中的每一个中的信息将根据可用的来源文件（例如同意法令或司法意见）进行检查，以纠正和增强案卷。 此外，来自EPA和其他地方的数据库将用于确定违规位置的纬度和经度坐标，以便未​​来的研究可以使用其精确的位置。 此过程的最终结果将是一个改进的案例数据库，可用于对EPA执行过程进行更可靠和复杂的统计分析。