Criminological Characteristics of Organized Environmental Crime in the Russian Federation

Throughout the world, modern environmental crime is characterized by the emergence of new forms of criminal behavior, improving ways of committing crimes and steadily increasing participation of organized criminal groups and communities in their commission. Nowadays, organized environmental crime along with environmental terrorism constitute a significant security threat. The distinctive features of organized environmental crime include: longevity and stability of a criminal organization, which in most cases effectively manages a complex of criminal activities from the organizational and economic point of view, and also has the ability to minimize the risks arising in this connection, long-term planning of activities, involving individuals and commercial structures, building criminal networks. Another characteristic feature is its focus on the market (including the illegal one). The organized groups often engage in criminal activities in various areas, committing environmental and economic and other types of crimes, while the corruption component is an integral feature of them. Organized transnational environmental crime carries out its activities in such key areas as illegal trade in rare and endangered species of wild fauna and flora and their derivatives, illegal logging and trade in illegal timber, illegal turnover of waste including illegal transportation, storage, discharge and burial, transboundary movement of hazardous waste, illegal fishing. Law enforcement and law enforcement agencies of various states pooling their efforts to curb ecologically criminal behavior, neutralizing all stages of the crime: planning, illegal extraction of resources, transportation, marketing, laundering of proceeds from crime play an important role in combating organized environmental crime. Eliminating the economic basis of the activities of criminal groups, reducing their profitability, is the key to success in combating it. Improvement of international legislation for development will create an integrated system of measures to counteract organized environmental crime at the level of individual states and ensure unification of national legislative systems in terms of terminology, compositions, and sanctions applied for the commission of environmental crimes by organized groups.