Public danger of ecological crime: criminological aspect

This article describes the characteristics of public danger of ecological crime. Specific features that distinguish it from other types of criminality are analyzed. Identified and justified are such features of environmental crime as an increased level of public danger, a wider range of victims, the continuing and deferred nature of the negative consequences, their transboundary nature, the irreversibility of the consequences, causing significant harm to the economic interests of the state, expressed in the withdrawal from the legal turnover of huge amounts of valuable natural resources. On the basis of the conducted research the author suggests wide use of the integrated criminological approach to studying the public danger of environmental crime taking into account its quantitative and qualitative characteristics.