Professional paper
ENVIRONMENTAL STANDPOINTS IN CONNECTION WITH THE PENAL CODE LEGISLATION
Srećko Grgurević
; County Court, City of Split
Abstract
The paper deals with alternations within the penal legislation in connection with environmental protection. After the reform of the penal legislation, the new Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Act came into force, so it has been interesting to see which novelties these regulations brought in respect to particular legal provisions related to environmental protection, and then in connection with the Basic Criminal Law of the Republic of Croatia, the Criminal Law of the Republic of Croatia and the Criminal Procedure Act itself, having in mind that the older acts were legally valid some twenty years ago.
Structural (the number of criminal acts, the structure of the legal act and the like) and material (substantial) changes of the penal legislation have been included with the analysis. The most important change is that provisions concerning environmental criminal acts have been put in a separate chapter, so the new legal act has been made more easy to consult with, and as for the content alternations most important novelty is the introduction of the category of environmental endangering, along with the existing category of environmental pollution.
State attorney's office will have an essential role in the application of the legal provisions. As the criminal procedure is in essence a reaction to an offence that has happened, we could not expect from the alternations of the criminal law to be the basic element of environmental regulation, because a preventive action is essential for environmental regulation and it could not be achieved only with force of law.
Keywords
civil society; environmental contamination; environmental pollution; environmental protection; legal sanctions; the penal legislation; prevention
Hrčak ID:
141669
URI
Publication date:
15.1.1999.
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