환경범죄단속법상 형벌규정의 문제점과 개정방향

At present, human beings live in an ‘ecologically dangerous society’ that threatens not only the survival of humanity as a whole but also the life of future generations, such as degradation of nature and global warming. The preservation and maintenance of a healthy and pleasant ‘environment’ in this ecologically dangerous society has become a demand of the times. And now, environmental protection has become an approved guideline value from all members of the national and international community beyond individuals and organizations. As a special criminal law, the Environmental Crime Control Act aims to raise public awareness of the danger of environmental crimes and eradicate environmental crimes to effectively protect human lives and the environment. To achieve these legislative objectives, the Environmental Crime Control Act emphasizes general preventive functions and adopts a method of reinforcing the statutory punishment based on the heavy penalty system. However, even if considering the nature of the special aggravated punishment law, the legal form of the Environmental Crime Control Act has a problem of imposing excessive penalties over the illegal or liability of acts compared with the statutory punishment of penal code. It is doubtful whether the Environmental Crime Control Act based on the heavy penalty system has faithfully attained the purpose of achieving environmental crime deterrence effect and effective environmental protection by sentencing to a heavy penalty at the examination of the sentence, which is the final stage of trial. This is because, unlike the legislative purpose of the Environmental Crime Control Act, the reality of actual legal application is rather different. This serious gap between the statutory punishment of the Environmental Crime Control Act and the sentence only leads to distrust in law enforcement. Therefore, in this paper, we first outline the overall occurrence of environmental crimes and the status of court processing accordingly. Next, we have examined what kind of problems exist in the penal regulations in the Environmental Crime Control Act, which prevent it from properly functioning as effective sanctions for the prevention of environmental crime, despite the fact that it is a special law regulating environmental crime. Based on this, we reviewed the necessity of revising the relevant penal regulations in order to enable the Environmental Crimes Control Act to respond realistically and effectively to environmental crimes.