On The Social Inquiry System In Juvenile Criminal Cases

The social inquiry system of juvenile criminal cases of China originates fromsection16of United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration ofJuvenile Justice. This section sets up five lowest standard elements for juvenile socialinquiry system for international society. It is instructive for the construction anddevelopment for the social inquiry system of different countries of the world. Ourcountry’s theory research of social inquiry system and judicial practice are also basedon the section. The aim of this article is to define the theory base of social inquirysystem and make it the base of theory research and system improvement; resolve thetheory disputes and explore the concrete design of social inquiry system; improve therelated rules of social inquiry system under current juvenile criminal proceduresystem, and achieve the localization of system.The definitions of connotation and appellation of the social inquiry system ofjuvenile criminal cases is the base of academic exchange and system construction.The connotation of the social inquiry system should reflect the features of juvenilecriminal cases and can emphasize the special aim for protecting the rights andinterests of the juvenile. The system of juvenile criminal cases based on thisconnotation can better satisfy the spirits of the system under current legal texts. Forthe reason of physiological and mental features of the juvenile in puberty, there existhuge difference between the juvenile justice and the adult criminal system. The ideabase of the social inquiry system of juvenile criminal cases is state paternalism, theeducational penalty idea and the idea of individualized penalty. And the statepaternalism can well express the feature of the system which is not penalty butcorrection. After exploring the social inquiry system of juvenile criminal cases, wecan find that the system has shown many features, such as authorization of socialinquiry system, specialization social inquiry system and the multi-function of socialinquiry system.The legislative and judicial practice of the social inquiry system of our country hasexperienced three periods. The first period takes the educational penalty as the mainidea, which is from1985to2000. The second period takes the educational penaltyand individualized penalty as the dominant idea, which is from2000to2010. the third period is the stage of further development of the idea of educational penalty andindividualized penalty, which is from2010and then. The deletion of the idea of statepaternalism brings many obstacles to the development and improvement of ourcountry’s social inquiry system. It will be the best choice for the development of hesocial inquiry system of the juvenile for our country that we should improve the socialinquiry system of the juvenile on the base of the basic idea, keep up with the trend ofthe international society and better protect the legal rights and interests of the juvenile.The definition of the rules of the social inquiry system subject is the coreproblem of the social inquiry system. The subject of social inquiry consists of subjectof initiation, subject of report application and subject of enforcement. The judicialpractice reform of our country’s social inquiry subject has shown various features.The construction of subject of the social inquiry should comply with correspondingrequirements, while drawing lessons from the foreign social inquiry subject rules andconsidering the present judicial practice situations of our country. As the actualenforcement subject of social inquiry, the social investigators are professional actionassistants and which have the position of separate litigant participants. The socialinvestigators should have separate rights to carry out the social inquiry, acquirenecessary job security, personal security, refer the case documents, and meet with thejuvenile. Certainly, the social investigators should bear some special duty, such as toaccomplish the social inquiry report optimistically and timely, appear in court andaccept the inquiry, keep secrets, accept the authorization and supervision and complywith the challenge system.The operation of social inquiry system should confirm to the legal procedure, andcomply with principle of legality, the principle of full investigation, the principle ofscientificalness, the principle of neutralism, the principle of individualization and theprinciple of keeping secrets. The social inquiry should follow the legal steps and takescientific methods.The social inquiry report is the written result of social inquiry work, which is acriminal treatment evidence out of the evidence of conviction in nature. It is a newtype of evidence category out of eight categories’ evidence. Its workability should notbe restricted as possible as it can be while it is restricted by corresponding rules. Thesocial inquiry report should include social inquiry files and social inquiry report paper.The social inquiry report paper can take table form, but the description of detailsshould be taken as the definite directive of contents. The social inquiry report should place an important role in the juvenile criminal cases in the stage of placing on file,investigation, review and prosecution, trial and enforcement. The application of socialinquiry report must make the report to be disclosed fully in the trial. The socialinvestigator should appear in court to accept the cross-examination in the stage ofmeasurement of penalty so as to fully carry out the proposals and defending ofmeasurement of penalty. The judges should adequately argue the application of thesocial inquiry report in the decision. Our country should gradually achieve thediversification of the functions of the social inquiry report with the development ofthe idea of social inquiry system.The innovation points of the article include the following contents. Firstly, thisarticle definitely puts forward that the idea of state paternalism is the basic idea of thejuvenile social inquiry report system in criminal cases, which decides that there existsessential difference about the social inquiry report between the juvenile criminal casesand the adult criminal cases. Secondly, it puts forward that the social inquiry under theidea of state paternalism should be the necessary procedure of the juvenile criminaljustice while using the historical analysis methods to systematically analyze the stagecharacteristics of legislation and judicial practice reform of the social inquiry systembeing influenced by the changes of idea. The definition and development of the ideasof state paternalism, educational penalty and penalty individualization make itpossible that the social inquiry system break through the scope of present applicationand can be applied in the juvenile civil cases, administrative cases and adult criminalcases. Thirdly, it puts forward that the selection of subject of the social inquiry shouldbe based on the present laws and situations of our country, both localized andprospective at the same time. Lastly, it definitely puts forward that the social inquiryreport is a new type of evidence out of the eight kinds of evidence and should bestrictly applied in trial combining the new development of evidence judgmentprinciple of evidence law theory, the evidence theory of measurement of penalty,proposals of measurement and defending theory of measurement of penalty.