Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions - Keep Britain Tidy

Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions
Tipping Controlled Waste 185 218
Tipping Hazardous Waste 40 44
Duty of Care 217 34
Waste Management Licence 263 46
All Offences 705 342
Source: Court Proceedings Database at the Office for Criminal Justice
Reform and Home Office Police National Computer.
While there are discrepancies in most offence types, these are more
pronounced for the duty of care and waste management licence cases where
only 20% appear on PNC. One possible reason for this is that local authorities
and the Environment Agency are not routinely informing PNC of convictions in
the cases that they prosecute. This means that knowledge about offenders,
and particularly their previous offences, is compromised. This is an issue
worth exploring further.
PNC revealed that 170 offenders were responsible for the 342 fly-tipping
offences. Moreover they had also between them been previously convicted of
1,008 other offences.
The age profile of this group was older than for the general criminal population.
Their mean age for a first appearance in court for a fly-tipping offence was
37.4 years 3 , see Figure 5.4 (SD=14.4; min=15.8; max=73.7). This compares
with studies showing that the peak age for offending generally is the late teens
and early 20s. Indeed, the age at which these offenders appear in court for
any offence is 30.2yrs. They appear, on the whole, to be a group of offenders
who either begin a criminal career later, or are cleverer, having managed to
avoid capture for some time.
3 Please note this data was available for just 138 offenders (81.2% of the total sample).
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