Investigation And Research On Judicial Application Of Environmental Pollution Crimes

Article 338 of the criminal law of 1997 stipulates the crime of major environmental pollution accident.In 2011,the eighth amendment to the criminal law changed the original "crime of major environmental pollution accident" into "crime of environmental pollution",which provides legal guarantee for the effective prevention and control of environmental pollution crime.After that,in order to better meet the needs of practice,the Supreme People's court and the Supreme People's procuratorate successively issued the interpretation on Several Issues concerning the application of law in handling environmental pollution criminal cases in 2013 and 2016,which provides the implementation rules for the application of environmental pollution crime.The implementation of the Eleventh Amendment to the criminal law in 2021 determines the new sentencing range of environmental pollution crime and increases the punishment for environmental pollution crime.At present,the crime of environmental pollution is still controversial in judicial practice.In this paper,2099 cases of environmental pollution crime in the first instance of the people's Court of Zhejiang Province are analyzed,trying to clarify and solve the controversial problems in judicial practice.The article is divided into four parts.The first part is an introduction to the crime of environmental pollution.On the basis of clarifying the concept and characteristics of environmental pollution crime,this paper combs the legislative evolution of environmental pollution crime,and analyzes the constituent elements of environmental pollution crime.The second part focuses on the data analysis of the research samples,showing the overall situation of the judicial application of environmental pollution crimes in my country from the time and number of cases,the geographical distribution of cases,the distribution of the number of criminal subjects,and the amount of fines for natural persons: the number of cases is increasing year by year However,the overall proportion of the number of cases has decreased;the distribution of cases in the provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions across the country is uneven,showing that the west is less and the east is more;the main body of crime is relatively concentrated,with joint crimes accounting for about 40%,and unit crime cases are relatively small,accounting for only 10%;The fines for natural persons are mostly concentrated below 50,000 yuan,which is relatively low.The third part is to find out the problems reflected in the judicial application of the crime of environmental pollution and the analysis of the reasons for the crime through data comparison and analysis.First of all,insufficient attention has been paid to ecological legal benefits in the judicial application of environmental pollution crimes.The second is that in the judicial judgment of environmental pollution crime cases,the criminal form is recognized as the consequent crime,and the dangerous crime is ignored.Once again,the judge's determination of the guilt of the crime is controversial:there are such doctrines as "intentional theory","negligence theory",and "mixed theory".Finally,the penalties are lighter,which is mainly reflected in the lighter penalties,probation is more applicable,and it is difficult to hold the criminal subject to accountability.The fourth part proposes countermeasures to alleviate the dilemma of judicial application of environmental pollution crimes.The first is to pay attention to the independent protection of environmental legal interests,and determine the modern anthropocentrism view as the legal interests of environmental pollution protection.Secondly,it is necessary to add clauses related to dangerous offenses in the environmental pollution crime.Third,it is necessary to clarify that the form of the crime of environmental pollution is intentional,which can better solve the problem of joint crimes while fighting crimes.Finally,we must improve the criminal sanctions system,including fines,suspended sentences,qualification penalties,and non-penalty penalties.