There is significant research literature that has studied the civil enforcement process, but we still have a poor understanding of how the Agency uses its criminal enforcement tools to enforce compliance with CERCLA. We work to fill this gap by exploring charging and sentencing patterns in federal CERCLA prosecutions. By exploring the Agency’s prosecution case summaries from 1983-2019, we are able to chart the evolution of how CERCLA has been used by EPA investigators and federal prosecutors to pursue criminal sanctions, the overarching themes of those investigations and prosecutions over the past 37 years, as well as the totality of those sanctions.