An Empirical Study On The Penalty Application Of Environmental Pollution Crime

With the development of economy,people are increasingly pursuing a high level of life.China is facing severe environmental problems because of the economic development model that emphasizes economic benefits and ignores the environment in the early stage.Among them,the frequent occurrence of environmental crimes is also an important factor leading to the current environmental problems,among which the crime of environmental pollution is a very representative crime.As an important means of sanction,the reasonable application of penalty to a certain extent also represents the effective punishment and prevention of such criminal acts.The crime of environmental pollution can not be well applied in the judicial practice of our country.In order to solve the problems existing in the judicial practice,this paper carries on the empirical research on the application of the punishment of the current crime of environmental pollution.Through the analysis of 156 cases of sample data,it is found that there are three main problems in the application of penalty for environmental pollution crime in China’s judicial practice: first,there is imbalance in sentencing;Second,the punishment of units is too weak;Third,the supplementary measures of penalty did not play a role.There are deep reasons behind every problem of environmental pollution crime in the application of penalty.The inadequacy of legislation and the deviation of judicial practice lead to the imbalance of sentencing;The lack of accountability standard for unit crime and the discrimination between unit and natural person lead to too weak punishment for unit;The backward concept of the disposition of penalty for environmental crimes makes the judges pay little attention to the application of the supplementary penalty measures,which makes the supplementary penalty measures can not play a reasonable role.For the problems existing in the application of penalty,this paper tries to put forward some specific suggestions: in the legislative level,taking the principle of legality as the principle,clear quantitative standards of sentencing;In the judicial level,the establishment of a unified case base,reasonable restraint of judicial discretion;Clarify the applicable standards of unit environmental crime so as to clarify the unit accountability standards,and treat unit crime and natural person crime equally;To strengthen the application of penalty auxiliary measures,establish the status of penalty auxiliary measures and increase the types of auxiliary measures.It is hoped that the above specific suggestions can promote the perfection of the penalty system of environmental pollution crime,so as to more effectively curb environmental pollution crime and restore the ecological environment.