Inadequacies And Improvements In Criminal Legislation On Environmental Crimes

With the accelerating process of modernization,China’s economy and industrialization have achieved a qualitative leap.The problem of "development or ecology" has gradually surfaced.In the process of economic development,there have been a series of environmental damage behaviors,leading to frequent environmental problems.Economic development and ecological protection seem to be the opposite,and the contradiction between ecological environmental protection and economic development has become extremely prominent.Severe environmental problems are caused by human transformation and utilization of the natural environment,but they are often driven by environmental crimes that endanger ecology and destroy environmental resources.Since the criminal law of 1979,environmental crime has been written into the criminal law.However,due to the slow industrial development after the founding of new China,environmental problems have not been highlighted.Compared with countries with high industrial development level,China’s criminal legislation of environmental crime is characterized by late start and narrow punishment.In 1997,China improved and revised the criminal code,and later issued a series of amendments,which further improved the provisions on punishing environmental crimes in China’s criminal law.However,the law has the disadvantage of lagging behind,and the criminal law is no exception.The continuous diversification of criminal means and methods under the development of science and technology makes criminal acts more and more difficult to be found.It is also very obvious in environmental crimes.If we want to protect the ecological environment while ensuring social and economic development and promote sustainable economic development,we must focus on the orderly adjustment of the participants in economic activities through legal means.As the most severe regulation,criminal law should give full play to its mandatory role and give effective criminal treatment to environmental crimes that seriously endanger the ecology with its more severe treatment means.From the perspective of China’s existing criminal legislation,although criminal sanctions have been set for the acts of damaging the environment and endangering the ecology with certain social harmfulness,there are still some deficiencies in the composition and responsibility of specific crimes,such as unreasonable penalty allocation,strong administrative subordination,lack of setting of dangerous crimes and so on.The lack of legislation leads to the relatively difficult definition of environmental crime in judicial practice.The phenomenon of "replacing punishment with punishment" is more common.The criminal law can not give full play to its role in preventing,deterring and punishing environmental crimes.Therefore,in order to give full play to the role of criminal law in the protection of ecology and environment in the way of penalty prohibition,it is necessary to improve the relevant provisions of criminal law in environmental crime,break through the excessive dependence on administrative law in the identification and punishment of environmental crime,realize the independent judgment of criminal law on environmental crime,reasonably set legal punishment,and increase the application of non penalty measures such as environmental restoration obligation,In order to improve the existing criminal legislation of environmental crime in China,so as to give full play to its role in environmental protection.The limitation of legislation makes the criminal law unable to give full play to its role in preventing,deterring and punishing environmental crimes.Therefore,in order to give full play to the role of criminal law in the protection of the environment and facilitate the punishment of environmental crimes,we should constantly improve the application of penalty,not only add additional penalties such as fine penalty,but also increase non penalty measures such as environmental restoration obligation.For those who break the environment,they are required to remedy the damaged environment and the pollution caused.In addition,we should break the subordinate confinement,and add the provisions of dangerous crime in the really necessary charges,so as to improve the existing criminal legislation of environmental crime in our country,so as to give full play to its role in environmental protection.