The Impact of Additional Penalties on Ecocriminological Safety

The paper examines the role of additional penalties in the differentiation and individualization of punishment for environmental crimes and in the formation of ecocriminological security. It identifies a paucity of scholarly research on the effectiveness of additional penalties as a means of protecting the environment from criminal threats and therefore further study of threats in this area as promising. The study demonstrates an inconsistency between the legislative model governing the imposition of additional penalties and established judicial practice. Although more than half of the sanctions contained in Chapter 26 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation permit cumulative application, courts seldom exploit the potential of additional penalties. Notably, three quarters of the sanctions that provide for additional penalties appear in qualified forms of environmental offences; nevertheless, only about 5 % of those convicted of environmental crimes receive additional penalties. This disparity indicates the limited effect of additional penalties on the individualization of criminal liability in this field. Further, there is no uniform legislative model for differentiating criminal liability for environmental crimes with respect to the amount of additional penalty prescribed by the sanctions of Chapter 26. Median values for the same additional penalty differ under alternative cumulation options, reflecting problems in assessing the public danger posed by environmental offences. The study concludes that the existing statutory variations in the cumulation of penalties are clearly insufficient to achieve consistent and proportionate sentencing in environmental criminal law.

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