Social Reasoning of Criminalization of Illegal Acts in the Sphere of Environmental Protection

The scientific article clarifies the social conditionality of the criminalization of socially dangerous acts against the environment, defines and investigates its criteria. According to the author, the social conditionality of criminal offenses against the environment is the idea of society about the criminalization of the corresponding illegal acts in this area based on the degree of their social danger, relative prevalence and typicality, dynamics, the possibility of influencing them by legal, in particular criminal law, means, the ability of the criminal justice system to counteract these offenses. It is noted that one of the essential features of criminal offenses in the field of environmental protection and, at the same time, social and criminological criteria for the criminalization of individual acts is social danger. It is concluded that the high degree of social danger of the analyzed acts is due to the significance of protected social relations, a wide range of objects of encroachment, as well as the system of criminological features of illegal acts associated with environmental risk, the ongoing nature of negative consequences (harm), the constant expansion of the range of socially dangerous encroachments, high latency, cross-border nature, negative impact on all institutions of society. It is noted that the main feature of the social danger of the analyzed acts is the significance of the social goods that the person encroaches on - such a state of the natural environment and its individual components that meets the criteria, standards, limits and norms established in the legislation. It is determined that a characteristic feature of the social danger of illegal acts provided for in Section VIII "Criminal Offenses against the Environment" of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is their harmfulness, the ability to cause harm. Key words: environment, criminalization, criminal offenses against the environment, natural environment, public danger.