Populism in the Field of Environmental Penal Policy

Abstract

The trend of industrial development in todays’ life has, unfortunately, led to irreversible environmental damages which mainly caused by human being. As such, a large number of legislators around the globe are trying to execute effective criminal policies to control and manage these damages. In spite of politicians’ attempts in preventing ecological damages, their criminal policies are sometimes influenced by general population, which we called it “populism in criminal policy”. Populist policies are normally emotional, incompetent, and unprofessional. They also have a great impact on inflation in criminal policies. Criminal populist policies are not designed to discover the root of crime. If fact, these policies tries to reject the elitist policies in order to content public interest by decisive and rapid responses. Taking the above into account, this article aims to investigate the populist policies in criminal environmental policy in Europe and Iran in order to demonstrate that these policies are not always designed to follow the primary goals of penal policy.