Prof. Jawad Abdel Lawy
Professor of Higher Education
Faculty of Law and Political Sciences
University of Mostaganem, Algeria

Abstract:

Criminalization and punishment policies designed to confront environmental delinquency fall within the general context of combating crime, and they are practiced according to scientific rules and objectives, and after field studies aimed to develop the most appropriate ways to confront environmental crime, which we can describe at least as a crime of a special nature. Research in reality and prospects of criminalization and punishment in the environmental field aim to clarify the most prominent deficiencies in the criminal protection of the environment, and to propose solutions that make this criminal protection more effective, and to contribute to laying the foundation stone for other studies in the field of criminal policy in general, and environmental criminal policy in particular.
To reach the objectives of this research, the researcher relied on the analytical approach of legal texts in order to evaluate and criticize it, in addition to using the comparative method sometimes, especially between the environmental constitutions and legislations of Algeria, France, Kuwait and Egypt, as well as the descriptive approach. One of the most important findings of the researcher is the large number of legal texts criminalizing attacks on the environment, although they are sometimes characterized by a lack of accuracy and clarity. He noted that the criminal text was absent from the constitution, in addition to the weak coordination between countries in the field of combating environmental crime.
The acknowledgment of the polluter payer principle also contributed to the effectiveness of the protection of the environment from crime. The researcher concluded that the diversity of penalties in the environmental field did not necessarily mean achieving efficiency in protecting the environment, especially with the weak intervention of environmental associations in the field of filing public lawsuits for environmental crimes, and that activating the environmental criminal policy, through its two mechanisms (criminalization and punishment), requires the introduction of a set of proposals, the most important of which is the need to unify legal texts concerned with the environment in one law, and to develop a unified punitive system.
Environmental crimes are in line with the Penal Code, keeping pace with the global trend in reducing criminalization and punishment for non-hazardous environmental crimes, including criminal protection for the environment in the constitution, encouraging environmental associations to exercise their right to defend the environment, the need to train judges in the environmental field to understand environmental texts, and activate the role of new penalties in the environmental field.

Keywords: criminal policy, punishment, delinquency, environment, and the criminal.

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