The Criminal Responsibility Of Young Offenders

It's a global social and academic matters to attention the affixation and confirmation the criminal responsibility of the young offenders.This doctoral thesis, beginning with committing a crime and criminal responsibility, discusses the age of young offenders, and their extension, criminal policy, principle, realization, and emotion crime, cognition of illegality, probationer system and recidivist system and etc.Chapter Ⅰ The Concept of Crime for Young Offenders. The crime of young offenders, in a broad sense, indicates not only the crime to violate punitive laws, illegal act to violate the regulations for security of society, but also the misconduct to violatethe moral norms——crime of dishonors, such as in England. U.S.A and Japan. Thecrime of young offenders, in a narrow sense, indicates the illegal conduct of the young offenders over 14 but under 18 to be penalized legally for endangering society or breaking the law, such as in Russia, France and China. The crime of young offenders, in our country, is different from juvenile delinquency and the misconduct of children. The crime of young offenders is a punitive concept, but the later two are concepts of criminology. The crime of young offenders was called juvenile delinquency first, and called children delinquency later. The concept for the crime of young offenders came into being until May 2th, 1995. However, the name, in Hong Kong, has become crime of children, whose age is over 7 but under 14, to be penalized for breaking the law. In Macaw it refers broadly to children over 12 but under 18 . But in Taiwan, the crime involves all children under 18 most broadly, children over 12 but under 18. The concept is similar to the crime of young offenders in our present punitive law.Chapter Ⅱ The Age for the Criminal Responsibility of Young Offenders. The age for criminal responsibility of young offenders was adverted earliest in Zhou Confucianism in ancient China. But it could be traced to Law of the Twelve Tables, and since then, there were certain regulations about the age in legislation in each period. According to some foreign punitive legislations, there are measures about the age of criminal responsibility such as dichotomy, trichotomy and quartation. But in ourcountry, there are two methods about the age for the criminal responsibility of young offenders, such as quartation and trichotomy. We agree to trichotmy of the age of young offenders, and we adhere to full - year principle and principle of conduct in confirming the age for criminal responsibility of young offenders in judicial practice, that is to say, if the criminal conduct or their outcome bestraddle the range of age ,there are some distinctions between the classification or punishment for them. However we disagree to the opinion that, it is improper to prescribe the minimum age as 14 full years and the prescription of minimum age should be reduced or flexibly dealt, and we should affix the criminal responsibility of the young offenders who, even if under 14, if they conducted brutally and did a abominable harm to the society.Chapter III The Extension for Criminal Responsibility of Young Offenders. There are three modes to deal with extensions for criminal responsibility such as enumeration, generalization and assumption of case in west countries. But in China we mainly adopted the mix or blending of enumeration and generalization before mending the criminal law in 1997, then we use more the method of enumeration. Now there are more disputes between extensions to criminal responsibility of young offenders. Some people think only those committing a deliberate murdering should be charged with criminal responsibility, but others think those young offenders should be charged with criminal responsibility as long as they commit a deliberate murdering. Because the present legislation and the judicial explanation on the extensions of criminal responsibility can't agree with each other, there are some confusions in judicial practice. In original intention of our legislation we should confirm the extensions to criminal responsibility of young offenders, just to be charged with criminal responsibility to committing a deliberate murdering'.Chapter IV, The Criminal Policy for the Criminal Responsibility of Young Offenders. The criminal policy in all countries presents two polarizations: to be punished more heavily or lighter . The international trend especially the direction by the Department of Juvenile Delinquency of the U.S will go in direction to be lighter and lighter. In our country, we implement the policy for the crimes of young offenders such as"educaling, reclaiming and saving "and "Education more important than punishment." And we take the theory of national custody, theory of solidarism andtheory of punitive individualization as theoretical basis. Moreover.,we have made out a principle bidirectional protection ,the principle education more important than punishment and the principle of mutual participation and comprehensive governing. And the principles have been prolonged into the whole process of putting on record, spying, accusing, judgement and ministration.Chapter V, The Principle for Criminal Responsibility for Young Offenders The principle for the criminal responsibility of adults is also a principle of prescribing a crime, and the principle both subjective and objective agree with each other, the principle of the accordance of crime, responsibility and punishment and the principle of individual responsibility etc, But the principles to express malice, major offence and major offence plus capacity of discernment are only for young offenders. In China, only 8 major offences for them. To give young offenders a lesser abatement punishment is a basic principle too, and how to apply it is a complicated problem. I think abatement is based on lesser punishment when lesser punishment is enough and it goes beyond the limit, ahatement to be applied.Chapter V The Emotion Offenders and Cognition of Law - breaking. Some young offenders commit an offence due to emotions and not knowing the law ,but in Chinese Criminal Law, it isn't clear how to punish them . I think emotion is only the plot of imposing penalty, not the essential condition to neglect the cogntion. Breaking Law isn't the conformity to constitutive elements of crime generally except some special conditions.Chapter VII,The Young Offenders and Prosecution of Criminal Responsibility, penalty, disposition of non - Penalty of and remission of punishment can be applied to young offenders. Penalties including life imprisonment temporary imprisonment, criminal detention restriction, fine expropriation and deprival of civil rights all, can be applied to them except death penalty ■. But there are few non - penalties that can be applied now. It's necessary to revise the criminal law to introduce more non - penalties, including community based service ,etc.Chapter VIII ,TheYoung Offenders and Applying of Probation and Recidivism Division. Probation includes deferring accusing , deferring conviction and deferring executing criminal sanction. The probation in Chinese Criminal law is only deferringexcelling criminal sanction .More applying probation to young offenders is advocated in Chinese criminal policy. If young offenders possess the necessary requisites to appling probation, the court should apply more. Now some judicial organs are introducing deferring accusing and conviction to China, but there is no governing law for deferring accusing ,so it should be prohibited. It is necessary to apply deferring conviction according to the law. In order to apply probation more to young offenders, the Chinese criminal law should be revised, to induce the introduction about rehabilitation of offenders etc.