O direito de intervenção como alternativa à responsabilidade penal ambiental das pessoas jurídicas

Abstract

Considering the scenario of environmental chaos in the modern world, with countless catastrophes occurring on a daily basis, the need for environmental legal protection has intensified since 1970. In Brazil, the protection process started with the 1988’s Charter and the Environmental Crimes Law, which provided in its Article 3., the criminal liability of legal entities to carry out harmful activities for the environment. Thus, the objective of this research is to question from the dogmatics’ and criminal policy’s point of view, whether the criminal responsibility of moral entities has been adequate in order to promote the protection of the environment in the country. Hence, the incoherence of the company's criminal liability with the Theory of Crime is demonstrated, especially due to the inability to act and to blame. Furthermore, this legislative option can be seen as a symbolic expression of the Law, which was only created to give a quick answer to an insecure population who is also unsatisfied with the environmental neglect. One concludes that in order to avoid the erosion of the structuring principles of Criminal Law and to seek greater effectiveness in combating this type of crime, it would be necessary to explore alternatives. In this sense, the Right of Intervention idealized by Winfried Hassemer is proposed, since it is based on more flexible rules that allow criminal liability of legal entities without major barriers. In addition, it allows a previous performance prior to the risks’ consumption, which is something important in the environmental field