Environmental crimes and Restorative Justice:

A timely and effective model for protecting the environment.

Abstract

Unveiling and implementing efficient strategies for the protection of the environment, especially in the post-damage stage, have proved to be herculean missions in Brazil, due to various factors, such as the scrapping of environmental public bodies, the inherent difficulties to the very recomposition of the injured environment, the excessive judicialization of the matter, the slowness of the justice system and the very degree reduced of satisfaction of the jurisdictional. This scenario calls for an urgent and collective effort of the State, society and, in particular, the organs that are part of the justice system, for the construction of viable alternatives to the preservation and restoration of the environment, as a common use of the people, essential to present and future generations. It is not neglected that criminal law, seen in this work in its broad sense (material and procedural), plays a clear and relevant function of social control, essential to the regular functioning of the Democratic State of Law on which we are based. In addition to this mister, however, it is certain that criminal law, especially when it turns its eyes to its preventive purpose, has assumed an increasingly promotional feature, giving up the exclusively punitive si hue, to pursue the transformation of each citizen, individually, and the community in general, in the direction of the peaceful solution of conflicts and the restoration of damages. Based on this premise, as well as welcoming the idea of Restorative Justice as a process model fully compatible (not excluding) with the current criminal justice model, the present work aims to support the convenience and adequacy of the use of restorative instruments, such as criminal transaction, procedural sursis and the recent agreement of non-criminal prosecution, as alternatives to sanctions of a distressing nature and, especially, as effective resources for the protection of the environment, because they enable the repair of environmental damage by a shortened and consensual route.