Principles of criminal law in the field of ensuring environmental safety

Academy of the Federal penitentiary service of Russian Federation, 1 Sennaya str., Ryazan, 390000, Russia

^* Corresponding author: a.copytowa@yandex.ru

Abstract

Enormous scale of issues of protecting the natural environment becomes more and more obvious as well as issues of development of human civilization. Current criminal legislation (Art. 2 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation) points to the protection of environment by means of law. This is the subject of Chapter 26 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation “Environmental Crimes”, where this group of crimes include water pollution (Art. 250 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation), air pollution (Art. 251 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation), marine pollution (Art. 252 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation) ), damage to the land (Art. 254 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation), destruction or damage of forest plantations (Art. 262 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation). These types of crimes are especially relevant at present, after a number of emergency situations associated with river pollution in a number of regions, as well as cases with forest fires. In this regard, attention is drawn to the legislative list of principles of criminal law. In particular, the principle of justice (Article 6 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation), which affects the interests of perpetrators of a crime. However, it should be recognized that the very category of “justice” presupposes not only consideration of interests of guilty person, but also interests of victim of a crime. Justice, as a principle of criminal law, should include, among other aspects, the restoration of victim's right violated by the crime and compensation for the harm caused to the victim.