Keyword: «environmental crimes»

The article deals with the problem of ensuring environmental safety in the Rus-sian Federation. Environmental protection is becoming more and more urgent due to the negative consequences of large-scale industrial development, the elimination of which requires large time and material resources. This determines the allocation of environmental safety as one of the main priorities of state policy. Legal regulation of environmental safety is carried out both by basic laws and strategic acts. Environ-mental safety is ensured by various legal means, a special place among which is oc-cupied by the criminal law. The author analyzes the provisions of criminal legislation in relation to environmental crimes: the emphasis is placed on the object of en-croachment and the distinctive characteristics of the composition of criminally pun-ishable acts. A comparative study of environmental crimes and administrative offens-es has revealed one of the reasons for the weak effectiveness of the means of criminal law. The considered statistics demonstrated problems related to the latency of acts, the imposition of punishments and the complexity of the application of norms. The author concludes that there is a need for an integrated approach to ensuring environ-mental safety in order to prevent the commission of illegal acts that pose a threat to the environment and violate the constitutional rights of citizens.