Community Correction System

Community correction, also called community- based correction, refers to non-imprisonment criminal penalty correspondingly functioning as imprisonment which rectifies the psychology and behavior abuse of the conditioned criminal in the community in session of making judgment by special State agency, together with the assistance of related social group, non-governmental organization and social volunteer, to smooth the social order. Community correction, as an internationally developing trend of criminal system, aims at educating and adjusting the criminals with mild crime, light malignancy and social endangerment or repentant and harmless to the society after the education and adjustment.In this article, the author, taking the criminal correction systems reform background of China and other countries, catering to the second amendment of China's Criminal Procedure Law, basing on criminal pretrial procedure and criminal trial procedure and targeting at redounding the social theory, analyzes the basic principle of community correction, its development in case law, particularly American community correction system and the problems of China's community correction and its improvement with comparative analysis and practical analysis methods. The article is constituted by introduction and five chapters.The introduction includes research goal, object and clue. The research purpose of this article is to diversify criminal penalty. The development and evolution of penalty executing procedure makes clear that more and more countries and areas start to abolish the severe penalty, concentrating less on the single penalty result and more on correcting criminal's psychology and behavior. In the West, more and more countries reappraise the imprisonment effect and favor non-imprisonment rectification, and many countries' on-imprisonment corrections go far beyond the imprisonment correction. We should realize it and rethink reforming China's traditional punishment-based criminal correction; The object of this article is the relationship between community rectification system and the criminal procedure system. Studying community correction can help us establishing a bridge between the secondary course of criminal procedure law and criminal law for community correction is concerned with both criminal procedure and criminal law. The key of community rectification is the criminal's social harm and personal fatalness, which is also the essential issue of criminal procedure and criminal law. Therefore, studding community correction can promote the criminal integration theory; the clue of this article is by profiting from the foreign experience, to reform and to develop China's existing criminal system. The focus of this article is the system arrangement and the system explanation in practice. In considering the narration of and comment on the form and phylogeny of western community correction, its dissection and the construction of China's community correction system, the author, when narrating and commenting on the phylogeny of western community correction, endeavors to achieve the authenticity of material narration and the objectivity of comment standard, in order to avoid unilaterally understanding the intrinsic growth mechanism and the external operational mechanism of west community correction due to the materials distortion or the subjective standard; While dissecting the west community correction and constructing China's community correction, the author works hard to differ the cultural background of the two legal systems to avoid the maladjustment because the direct transplant and graft.The first chapter is the formation and the development of community correction system. In this chapter, the author broadly summaries the formation and the development of community correction system, attempting to inquire its basic clue and the external environment. Because the community rectification system is adopted from other countries, and the modern community rectification system is originated from US, in this chapter the author begins from the idea emergence of the American community correction and analyzes its reason. It is the emergence and development of community correction theory that changes people's value to penalty execution. The community rectification is not merely for benevolence, and not to shorten the severe and long prison term, also not the repayment to the correction result of penalty execution or the benignity, but is to transfer certain special accepted criminals to the community from the imprisonment place before the penalty execution session when making non-person-danger judgment even if release them at the beginning,, and give them opportunities of becoming law-abiding citizens through the instructive inspection of protective observation. Under the above, the author objectively outlines and explains the formation, the establishment, the development, as well as the resistance in the developing process of community correction system in USA. The author points out that, the application and establishment of probation system and the formation of specialized probation official symbolize the formation of American community correction; but it is the US federal government's financial support which finally established the system in USA. This is because that the out-numbered prisoners in jail largely increased the financial funds, for instance, the penalty execution funds of the state governments increased from 5,900,000,000 US dollars in 1984 to 20,700,000,000 US dollars in 1996 which made many people who opposed community rectification change the standpoint. And the community rectification is the government's most advisable choice compared with the imprisonment correction.Besides the history of American community correction, the author studies the formation and development of Japanese community correction in civil law. In Japan's Meiji Restoration criminal law, there was a very specific community correction system, namely the afar-jail criminal's protection which developed into rebirth protection--execution in community (also may be regarded as a broad community correction). In the 20th century, Japan's community rectification is characteristic of the universal criminals and the special care to non-jailed youth which, being worth us profiting from, had widespread influence in the various countries. Moreover, Japan is also typical of protection judicial system. Perhaps one of the most important factors of low crime rate is the establishment of Japanese special community rectification organization which, as a small and tightened unofficial organization, can effectively control the member's behavior and the serving criminals in the community to avoid committing crimes again. Thus, under this powerful restraint, the crime rate reduced naturally.It is the special value, the efficiency and the. humanity of community correct which makes the United Nations advocates and supports community rectification system in the world, and some regional international organizations initiate the manifesto of supporting the community ratification in their respective member countries. The community correction system draws a worldwide focus.The second chapter is the basic principle of community rectification system which concerns with the rationale, the basic principle, the nature, the function, the development evaluation and the problems of the community rectification system. In this chapter, the author firstly elaborated the rationale of the community correction, pointing out the theory basis of the human rights protection idea, the recoverable judicature idea, the criminal judicature modest and thrifty idea, the criminology label theory, the deepened recoverable theory, and the socialization idea of execution which explained the intrinsic rationality of community correction system from different aspects. Next, the author elaborates the basic principle and nature of community correction, namely the procedure priority principle, the returned to society principle, the service to the community development principle, primarily correction and secondarily penalty principle. Above all, the author analyzes two disruptive viewpoints on community correction nature which root in how to understand the position and the function of community in community activity. The author is inclined to define the community as non-imprisonment in considering China's reality.And then, the author mentions the significance of community correction. Firstly, it is beneficial to positively reform and improve Chinese- characterized penalty execution system; Secondly, it is conduced to fully use society resources, enhance the education to the criminal and maximally transform the negative factor into positive factor to maintains the social stability; The third is the reasonable disposition of penalty execution resources, reduces its cost, and improve the penalty function. The forth one is that it caters to the world criminal law system developing trend and manifests the social civilization progress. And next, the author analyses the humanity and benefit values of community correction system, pointing out that the community rectification manifests the tolerance, the idea of human consideration as well as saves the criminal judicature resources and the resources of relieving afar-jailed persons. As a coin has two sides, community correction system has its weak points, such as expansion of society control scope, discrimination and others. The key solution is overcoming them to reduce the negative effect as possibly it can be. Regarding the community correction, we can accurately screen the personal fatalness and the possibility of recommitment through earnest examination, fatalness appraisal and other scientific methods before the trail, to provide the technical support for accurate community correction implement.The third chapter is the pretrial procedure of community correction system with comparative measure. Firstly, the author stated the pigtail release system of USA which, taking a great place in the criminal procedure, is the first criminal procedure, and that many traditional and innovative plans provide releasing the suspects from the lockup before the trial. With the recent 20 years development of pretrial release, the pretrial penalty transform raised in purpose of helping the defendant and protecting public safety. If the defendant can successfully complete one of these community correction measures, his or her crime indictment may possibly be relieved. There are mainly three types of pretrial penalty transform, namely the mediation, the detention prosecution (or postponed prosecution) and the substitution measure of punishing street crime, that among them both the mediation and the detention prosecution are distributor measures aiming at avoiding the accused person suffering the hardship of imprisonment and lightening the criminal judicature burden. The essential point of community correction is to rectify the pretrial released and penalty transformed persons to guarantee the rectification of their behaviors after the release, which also assure the successful transform. And next, the author analyzes the possibility establishing postponed prosecution the possibility, and its community correction way.In the pretrial procedure, the distributor measures are bail-for-trial system and the education-through-labor system, and how to reform the two systems as well as their combination with community correction system is a key point of this chapter. The author thinks that, because some people can be rectified in community before the prosecution and trial in aspect of bail-for-trial, achieving certain abuse correction, Thus, they can obtain more opportunities of postponed prosecution (if implement this system) and non-prosecution or probation opportunity. In other words, if the prosecutor or judge think that the accused person with light crime in bail-for-trial has been corrected in the community, he or she can be postponed for prosecution and continue to accept the correction in community. Therefore, transferring them away from the criminal prosecution procedure both reduce the criminal judicature pressure and avoid the accused suffering from the hardship of imprisonment. Moreover, as the widely practice of community correction, its judicial resources can be proportionally increased, which makes the education-through-labor system economically unworthy. Just as the relationship between imprisonment punishment and the community rectification, the education-through-labor holds the inverse proportion of increase and reduction with community correction which the expansion of community rectification causes the education-through-labor inevitably reduced or even abolished.The fourth chapter is the community correction comparison of post-trail procedure between China and other countries. This chapter focused on the following issues: the. first is the accused person's personality investigation system fatal to the community correction development of post-trail procedure. Because the success of community correction relies greatly on the accuser's personality which depends on the establishment of scientific personality investigation system; the second is the probation and the community rectification in relation of that the probation system is the premise and foundation of community correction which guarantees the probation system effectively implemented. Looking over the overseas probation systems, we may find that the determination (i. e. the investigation system before decision), execution and inspection of suspension sentence are connected with community correction system which are otherwise unable to be carried out or become the substituted name of free setting with no guilt; the third is the parole and the community rectification system, of which the author proposes a lot for its development in China. The forth is the content and rationale of social service command in terms of criminal punishment, and the possibility of constructing it in China.The fifth chapter is the tentative plan of improving China's community correction. At first, the author generally analyzes the weak point of China's community correction system and its practice, the necessity, feasibility of community correction in China, explores its basic idea and principle and plans its construction in the near future. The author suggests that points that the establishment of China's community correction system should bases on China's situation while adopted from other countries' experience which develops with the advancement of criminal procedure law theory and people's request for judicial democracy. And considering the gradual development of law and its practice, the author suggests three steps for constructing China's community correction, i. e. its establishment, development and improvement which, specially and importantly, are constituting Community Correction Ordinance, revising the Criminal Procedure Law, the criminal law and the prison law to standardize community correction system and constitute Community Correction Law when conditions are satisfied.