Study On The Coordination Of Legislation Of The Criminal Fine

Under the current world trend of lighter punishment, criminal fine is the inevitable choice in legislation configuration, which is also a result of diversification and humanization in criminal penalty and its function and role in the penal system is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, the legislation configuration of criminal fine is paid more and more attention throughout the world. To ensure the effective function of the criminal fine, the legislation coordination of criminal fine is very important. The legislation of the criminal fine can not be separated from the nature of the penalty, which should be in line with the purpose of the criminal fine. Therefore,the principle of balance between crime and punishment, as well as the purpose of punishment can be the basis for the coordination of the criminal fine legislation. The key point of the criminal fine legislation harmonization is the legislation coordination between crime and punishment, which is the coordination of legislative content of fine penalty. The criminal fine legislation itself is a system. There are two major parts in the legislation of criminal fine penalty of natural person and the legislation of unit crime fine penalty. At the same time, having such elements as the scope of application,the way of application and the amount of fine, the criminal fine and property confiscation are made of property punishment system, and which forms the penalty system along with the freedom punishment, life punishment and qualification punishment. Penalty system and administrative penalty system such as fine penalty are the main parts of law system, and are the parts of the whole social system. Penalty system and administrative penalty system such as fine penalty are the main parts of law system, and are the parts of the whole social system. According to the wholeness principle and the correlation law of structure and function in system, the legislation of criminal fine should be coordinated with property confiscation punishment, freedom punishment, life punishment, fine penalty and other compositional parts of legal system and the social system. And all those parts should be formed into an ordered structure. That is the coordination of the legislation form of the criminal fine. Both crime and punishment have ladder type, that is, hierarchy, which exactly meets thehierarchy principle of the system theory. According to the hierarchy principle and the wholeness principle of system theory, and the essence and characteristics of criminal penalty, penalty order is the reference for the coordination of criminal fine legislation.Moreover, in the penalty system and the legal system, as well as in the whole social system, penalty order links all those elements, including the criminal fine, property confiscation punishment, freedom punishment, life punishment and fine penalty, etc.With the continuous development of China’s socialist economy and the progress of civilization and the rule of law, criminal fine is paid more and more attention in the course of criminal penalty configuration. Since the promulgation of the first criminal law of the PRC in 1979, the criminal configuration scope of criminal fine legislation has been expanding. In the current criminal law, except for the Chapter 1 of the crimes of endangering national security, Chapter 9 of the crimes of dereliction of duty and Chapter 10 of crimes of soldiers violating military duty, all the other seven chapters have rules in criminal fine configuration. The proportion of application of criminal fine is also rising. There were only 23 criminal charges applied for fine punishment in the 1979 Criminal Law, and the number has been extended to 239 now.But unfortunately, although lawmakers have realized the significance and function of criminal fine, throughout China’s current criminal penalty legislative configuration,the legislation coordination of criminal fine is still not very satisfying in the specific criminal penalty configuration. The criminal fine legislation is uncoordinated in many issues, such as application scope of criminal fine, the way of application and the amount, etc. The phenomena of the same crime with different criminal fine and over-punishment or under-punishment in criminal fine are widespread. At the same time there is phenomenon that the criminal fine which is a milder punishment than property confiscation is configured in a more serious crime while property confiscation is configured in a less serious crime. That is, legislation of the criminal fine and confiscation of property is not coordinated with each other. For the crimes with the same nature and the same configuration of the principal crime penalty, the legislation of the criminal fine may have huge difference, which means that there is a problem of inconsistence between legislation of criminal fine and the principal crime penalty. There are also the problems that the amount of criminal fine is significantlylower than the non-criminal fine penalty which should have been in a lower degree of punishment. This means that criminal fine legislation is inconsistent with the non-criminal fine penalty legislation. Uncoordinated criminal fine legislation seriously affects the effectively functioning of criminal fine, and also restricts the functionality of the entire penal system.Therefore, according to the wholeness principle of system theory, the principle of balance between crime and punishment, and the legislative requirement of meeting the purpose of criminal fine, all the economic crime and property crime, financial crime and the crime with actual benefit or with intention to benefit should be will be configured criminal fine, so as to realize the coordination in criminal fine punishment scope. According to correlation law of structure and function in the system theory,criminal fine should be combined with the penalty of property confiscation, freedom punishment and life penalty. For the economic crime, property crime, the crime with motivation or purpose of illegal interest purpose and the crime on certain financial reasons in the lower level, the criminal fine configuration should be “only fine or additional fine”. For the crime which will bring large economic loss to the nation or society, the criminal fine should be configured as “it is allowed to impose fine penalty only or additional fine”. For the common crime with no clear purpose of money in the counts, the optional criminal fine should be configured. For the economic crime with greedy purpose, the property crime, the crime on certain financial reasons and the crime related to criminal syndicate or terrorism, which are the crimes in a high level,the configuration of necessary criminal fine should be used. For the crime which will bring large economic loss to the nation or society, the additional criminal fine should be configured. According to the hierarchy principle in system theory, unlimited criminal fine should be cancelled so as to achieve effective convergence between the quota fine penalty and times ratio fine punishment, as well as the criminal fine and main penalty. The different functions of criminal fine and confiscation of property penalty should be clarified. For the crime of endangering national security, the crime related to criminal syndicate or terrorism, the crime at the level with punishment of“more than ten years imprisonment, life imprisonment or death penalty”, the property confiscation should be configured as the criminal fine. For other crimes that should beconfigured property punishment, the application of criminal fine is appropriate. The rule of unlimited fine penalty should be cancelled. For the non-criminal acts and the criminal acts with the same nature, the amount of fine should be in agreement.According to the wholeness principle, the hierarchy principle, as well as the correlation law of structure and function in system theory, for all the units who are the subject of the unit crime, the criminal fine should be configured; and for the responsible person of those units, the configuration of criminal fine should refer to the fine penalty of the natural person crime. For the unit crime, the penalty order system and the criminal fine amount should be decided firstly. And the ratio of the amount of the fine penalty should be determined by reference to the ratio of the case establishment criteria of the unit crime and the natural person crime. Then the penalty order of the criminal fine for unit crime can be determined. Therefore, the criminal fine for unit as the subject, the responsible person as the subject, and natural person as the crime subject can be coordinated. Configuring criminal fine as above can realize the inner-coordination in the legislation subsystems of the fine penalty and the outer-coordination between those systems such as criminal fine, property confiscation, freedom punishment and life punishment. Thereby, the coordination of the legislation form of the criminal fine is realized, as well as the coordination of the legislation content of the criminal fine.