On The Perfection Of Legislation Of Pollution Crimes In China

In recent years, with frequent pollution accidents, the legislative defects ofenvironmental pollution crime are increasingly exposed, including the cursory andlagged legal system, indifference to Eco-Rechtsgut, ambiguous mens rea, exclusion ofdanger consequence from criminal law, unscientific penalty frame, which restrictcriminal law to combat environmental pollution crime. So it is imperative to perfectthis part of criminal legislation. Based on the analysis of the concepts ofEnvironmental Crime and Environmental Pollution Crime, this paper furtherintroduces current situation and defects of environmental pollution criminalization inour country, and proposes some legislative perfection suggestions by comparing andlearning extraterritorial environmental criminal provisions so as to do somecontribution to Chinese penal reform improvement.This paper follows the traditional thinking of master’s thesis: questions-reasonsanalysis-comparative study–countermeasure seeking. To begin with, the first partfocuses on clarifying the core concepts of Environmental Crime and EnvironmentalPollution Crime. It first respectively expounds generalized Environmental Crime andEnvironmental Crime sensu stricto with Rechtsgut protectionism as the connotationrevealing clue. Then it turns out that only generalized Environmental Crime is anirresistible trend of global criminalization which will help natural environment torestore its independent Rechtsgut identity from an ecological humanism standpoint.This part also introduces four theories on the Rechtsgut of Environmental PollutionCrime, and concludes the specific concept of Environmental Pollution Crime on thebasis of the advantages-disadvantages analysis. In the next, the paper concludes thecharacteristics of Environmental Pollution Crime in harmful consequence, criminalsubject, mens rea and causality by contrasting it with Environmental Resource Crime.The second part focuses on the general legislation about Environmental PollutionCrime in China. We have a long history of Environmental Pollution Criminalizationwhich dates back to Han and Tang Dynasty. The environmental penal provisions inmodern criminal law are improved continuously with economic development andenvironmental situation deteriorating. As the provisions aiming at perfectingEnvironmental Pollution Crime in several criminal amendments, combined with thesupplemental instruction by legislative interpretation and judicial interpretation, theEnvironmental Pollution Crime legal system with criminal code as center, the crimeof environmental pollution as main accusation and actual damage offence as incriminating standard is generally established now in China. However, it doesn’tmean the legislation is perfect.On the contrary, we still have a lot of problems rangefrom legal system to accusation to penal that need to be solved.The last two parts focus on how to perfect Environmental Pollution Crime.Thereinto, the improvement measures proposed later are based on the extraterritoriallegislation in the third part. This part presents concrete Environmental Pollutioncriminalization both in civil law system countries and common law system countries,summing up their advantages in order to provide some references to our legislativereform. The forth part finally put forward some perfect suggestions to the currentEnvironmental Pollution Crime legislation of our country including adjusting legalsystem, supplementing accusations, putting Involuntary Threatener into criminal law,clarifying mens rea, and treasuring economic penalties and non-punitive measures.