Criminal Enforcement Case Report Help

The Criminal Enforcement Case Report summarizes concluded federal criminal actions resulting from environmental investigations taken by the U.S. EPA. Criminal Actions can occur when EPA or a state enforce against a company or person through a criminal action. Criminal actions are usually reserved for the most serious violations, those that are willful, or knowingly committed. A court conviction can result in fines or imprisonment.

The Summary of Criminal Prosecutions Database is the primary source of the data displayed in the Criminal Enforcement Case Report. The Summary of Criminal Prosecutions resulting from environmental investigations provides information on concluded criminal enforcement cases, by the U.S. Government’s fiscal year. The Summary is updated regularly and although individual summaries contain major elements of the case (e.g., the nature of the violations and the resolution of the prosecution), they do not comprehensively describe every aspect of the case and do not include full text of the actual order or settlement document(s). You may wish to review official case documents on file in the respective U.S. District Court. The Summary database is not guaranteed to contain all cases investigated or prosecuted by EPA's Criminal Enforcement Program.


 Accessing the Case Report

From the Enforcement Case Search Results:

  • Case Identifiers are listed in the Case Identifier column of the Results table. Clicking a Case Identifier opens the Criminal Enforcement Case Report page in a new tab.
  • Clicking on a row in the Results table will display the Case Summary panel to the right of the table, below the Search Statistics Panel. The "More Case Details" link at the bottom of the Case Summary tab opens the Criminal Enforcement Case Report page in a new tab.

 Navigating the Case Report

The Case Report is organized into the following five sections:

  • Basic Information – contains information that identifies the action and some key descriptive variables, such as fiscal year, statute, and citation.
  • Defendants – lists individuals, companies, and other entities identified as being party to the enforcement action.
  • Case Summary – provides information about the status of the case by describing major milestone events and background information about the defendants.
  • Case Details – provides a description and date for each milestone of the case.
  • Locations – provides information about the locations of the crimes named in the compliant.

See the Data Dictionary for descriptions of the data elements presented in the Criminal Enforcement Case Report.

In addition, links to access related functionality are provided for the following:

  • Data Dictionary – Opens the Criminal Enforcement Case Report Data Dictionary to assist you in understanding the information presented.
  • Download Data [under development] – Allows you to choose all or portions of the report to download as a comma separated value (.csv) file.
  • Print – Opens the Criminal Enforcement Case Report in a printer-friendly format.
  • Help – Provides access to this Help page.

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 Reporting Data Errors

If you believe that some of the information in the Criminal Enforcement Case Report is in error, you may report your findings from the report page. Click the "Report Data Error" button at the top of the page. 

The error reporting form will ask for your contact information, in order to keep you informed of progress in addressing your report, and a description of the problem. Please include enough information to allow EPA to identify the data in question and to evaluate your comment.

Once you submit the report, it will be entered into EPA's Integrated Error Correction Process. You will receive an immediate acknowledgement on the webpage, and status updates as EPA determines how to address the report.