A Study On Some Problems About Environmental Crime

Environmental pollution and ecological damage, which are regarded as byproducts of human civilization, accompany the development of human society. Especially in modern industrial society, environmental pollution and ecological damage have already posed a grave threat to human survival and development. One hundred and ten Nobel Prize winners called for ten years ago, "Human and nature are in head-on danger, and human activities bring irreversible harm to valuable environmental recourses... Human must make a complete revolution on the way of managing our globe and life, thus we can escape future bitterness." So, European parliament passed a bill of "Protect Environment by Criminal Law" and the United Nations also passed a resolution of protecting environment by way of Criminal Law on the eighth assembly about crime prevention and treatment to prisoners. China revised Criminal Law in 1997 and especially set up the sixth section of "Crimes against Destroying the Protection of Environment and Resource" in the sixth chapter of "Crimes against Social Administration", which is a progress in the history of Environment Crime Legislation. It initiates a new prospect of environmental protection, severely punishes environmental crime, and provides a protective screen for environmental protection. However, as time goes on, lots of cases of environmental crime appear in judicial practice, which offers grave challenges for Environmental Criminal Legislation and reveals some defects in Chinese Environmental Criminal Legislation. The thesis aims to analyze the defects on legislation of Chinese environmental crime and offer a way for reference to improve Chinese criminal legislation of environmental crime by comparing the environmental crime and its criminal legislation of China with the rest of world.The thesis has four parts except introduction and conclusion:Part 1 Overview on Environmental Crime. This part describes four problems: firstly, introduction and analysis of Chinese and Foreign environmental criminal legislation: secondly, elaboration on concept and characteristics of environmental crime; thirdly, classification of environmental crime; finally, basic theory of environmental crime from the point of environmental ethics.Part 2 Knotty problems in the constitution of Environmental Crime. We analyze a series of problems in the constitutive theory of environmental crime from two aspects: the subject and the causal connection in environmental crime.Part 3 Problems of dangerous criminals in Environmental Crime. This part contains three aspects: the concept and classification of the dangerous criminals, and a detailed description on the necessity of setting up the dangerous criminals in environmental crime as well as an introduction to the stipulation on the dangerous criminals of environmental crime in criminal law abroad.Part 4 Defects and improvement of our Environmental Criminal Legislation. In this part, we analyze and demonstrate the flaw of our legislation of environmental guilty by comparing the law in China and foreign countries and give some suggestions on improving the legislation.