Contemporary trends in the judicial practice of compensation for damage in commissioning environmental crimes

The prerequisites for the research were a comprehensive analysis of the state of environmental safety in the Russian Federation indicative of negative trends in this area including the compensation for harm caused as a result of committing environmental crimes. The article presents the results of the analysis of the criminal case files related to compensation for harm caused as a result of committing environmental crimes. The research authors noted such a feature of environmental crimes that when they are committed, the damage is caused to objects that have both environmental and economic value. Often, at the same time, environmental damage is caused to a certain extent by economic (property) damage (harm) which significantly complicates the resolution in practice of the issue related to compensation for harm caused as a result of committing environmental crimes. The core problem identified by the authors is that environmental harm from the point of view of its complex manifestation cannot be detected immediately, but after a rather long time; there are cases when it can be completely irreparable. The authors made an attempt to summarise the law enforcement practices of Russian courts related to compensation for harm caused as a result of committing environmental crimes, both at the stage of preliminary investigation and judicial proceedings, consider the types of harm to be compensated and the recovery procedure, identify problems arising during compensation for various types of harm. Based on the research results, measures aimed at improving the mechanism of legal regulation of compensation for harm caused as a result of violation of environmental safety rules were proposed; the need for legislative consolidation of the criteria for determining the amount of compensation for harm by the courts, as well as the need for specialisation of courts considering cases related to environmental offences