Acerca de la necesidad de una reforma urgente de los delitos de contaminación en Chile, a la luz de la evolución legislativa del siglo XXI

Abstract

The article describes and systematizes the modifications to the norms that protect the environment and the objects that compose it in the last decade in Chile. This analysis allows to conclude that, while there have been important advances in the criminal protection of biodiversity and in some other specific aspects, this is not observed regarding the penal regulation of the phenomenon of serious environmental pollution, the mockery of the administrative system of protection of the environment and punishment of legal persons responsible for environmental crime. It is argued that the origin of these differences seems to be in the disagreement regarding the legitimacy, necessity and form of regulating the crimes of contamination. Given this differences, the text proposes to advance in the protection of the environment by perfecting the criminal figures already existing in our system, as a way to fill the legislative vacuum detected.