Misdemeanor System Research

The distinction of Misdemeanor and felony is the statutory classification of crimes in many countries'Penal Code, but there is no misdemeanor concept and system in the sense of statutory classification in China. Crimes in China's Criminal Code is about the equivalent of the felony section in criminal codes in many other countries, the misdemeanor part of the crimes are mainly regulated by re-education throught labour and administrative punishment in China. Based on previous studies, this paper carried out a systematic study of the establishment of misdemeanor in China. This paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter introduces the status of academic research on misdemeanor system in China, and the significance, concept of misdemeanor system. Section one analyzes the academic research on the misdemeanor system, and described theoretical and practical significance of misdemeanor system. In section II the concept of misdemeanor was defined and, also briefly introduced the foreign misdemeanor system and its differences with security measures and violation.The second chapter studies the theoretical value of misdemeanor system. I analyzed the relationships between misdemeanor system and the control of the administrative power, the principle of balance between crime and punishment, the legal interest protection function of criminal law, the principle of clarity of the criminal law. Misdemeanor system will help to control the abuse of administrative power, and also conducive to implementing the principle of balance between offenses and punishment and in legislative level and the protection of legal interests. The establishment of the system will also help to resolve the drawbacks brought about by qualitative distinguishing of crime and administrative violations.Chapter III talk about the necessity of the establishment of misdemeanor system in China. The necessity is mainly reflected in followings: reform of re-education through labor system; Reasonable distinction of administrative violations and crime; carring out the criminal policy of combining punishment with leniency; coordination of the scope of protection by criminal law in intellectual property with internation standards.Chapter IV analyzes the obstacles and difficulties on the establishment of misdemeanor system in China. The obstacles are mainly as followings: over-extended expansion of the crimes scope, the problem of criminal records, and the issue of negative impact of criminal "stigma", which all caused by the establishment of misdemeanor; the difficulties of coordinating misdemeanor system with existing criminal theory; scientific and reasonable defining of the scope of misdemeanor.In Chapter V, the specific contents of China's misdemeanor system was designed. The chapter advocated an independent "misdemeanor law" system as the mode to establishing misdemeanor system in China. "Misdemeanor law" should mainly include three type behaviours : part of the violations punished by re-education through labor system; minor offenses in Criminal Law which the maximum statutory sentence is 3 years; dangerous behaviours that need to be criminalized, such as dangerous driving, oblivious to others sufferings, etc. The procedure of misdemeanor cases should follow the principle of summar and fast. In order to solve the adverse effects of criminal record caused by establishment of misdemeanor system, criminal records repealing system should be established.