Key determinants of environmental crime in Russia

Saint Petersburg’ Institute of the All-Russian State University of Justice (Russian Law Academy of the Ministry of Justice of Russia), 19000 Saint Petersburg, Russia

^* Corresponding author: lokhi@yandex.ru

Abstract

The subject of the study is the peculiarities of ensuring environmental security in countering environmental crime. Effective counteraction to it is impossible without detailed data on the causes of environmental crime. Modern Russian concepts of the determination of criminal behavior are diverse, but they are based on the analysis of the social complex of causes of crime. Scientists divide the established approaches into three groups depending on the presence in the center of determinants of social processes, subjective causes, or biological properties of the criminal’s personality. Environmental crime has peculiarities, and both general and specific determinants may underlie the genesis of criminal behavior. Using a wide range of general scientific methods (primarily content analysis and instrumental analysis), the authors substantiate the conclusion about the selfserving nature of environmental crime. The main criminal threat to environmental security is acts of socially dangerous behavior committed against natural resources and aimed at illegal trafficking. The perpetrator, acting for personal enrichment, does not realise the damage to the natural environment most times. Other types of environmental crimes relate to improper fulfilment by economic entities of their obligations in environmentally safe operation of industrial and other facilities. The listed types have a small percentage of the overall structure of environmental crime. Such factors as the demand for natural resource products and marginalization of part of the population living in resource-rich but economically depressed regions of Russia underlie the determinants of criminal behavior.