Position Rank And Corruption Punishment

China has increased the anti-corruption efforts since 18th CPC National Congress and a large number of officials were investigated and arrested because of the bribery crime.Because of the special positional identities of the officials,they have the large or small power,which may even reach the judiciary and interfere in the punishment on the corrupt officials.High-ranking officials,in particular,have greater interference in the judiciary,therefore the punishments for them are paid more attention.Corruption punishment is important.Effective punishment for corruption is key to anti-corruption,and also the core of anti-corruption in system.If punishment can not be timely and effective,it will seriously blur the consistency of China’s anti-corruption policy,distort the whole society’s understanding of anti-corruption,and even shake the confidence of the impartiality and authority of the judicial system.And delayed and ineffective punishment will also be a negative incentive for corruption and thereby further deterioration of the situation of corruption and greater obstacle to economic development.Criminal punishment for corruption in China over the years had been mainly based on the provisions of Criminal Law about the embezzlement and bribery in 1997,which stipulated that sentence primarily based on rigid amount of corruption and the standard range was confined in five thousand,fifty thousand and one hundred thousand yuan respectively.The provisions cann’t adapt to the changes and current situations of corruption.In order to effectively punish corrupt officials,criminal law was substantially modified in 2015.It is necessary to study the problem of corruption punishment under the background of anti-corruption and law revision.However,there are few literatures on the research in the field of corruption punishment.The study of corruption punishment in the field of economics is mainly focused on three aspects:the study of the theory of corruption punishment,the study of the natural or laboratory experiments on corruption punishment and the empirical analysis of the corruption punishment using the macro data.This paper discusses the influence factors of the corruption punishment,especilly focuses on the empirical analysis of the effect of the position rank of the corrupt officials on the corruption punishment base on the micro data in the judicial practice.In accordance with the requirements of the Supreme People’s court,the people’s courts at all levels have opened the effective judgment document to the society in the network for the first time since January 1,2014.We downloaded the first instance criminal judgment of embezzlement and bribery from 2014 to 2016,and sorted out a series of variables related to the corruption punishment,including the amount of the corruption and sentence length,the plot of the criminal case,the characteristics of the court and the personal characteristics of the subject of corruption.These are the most complete database of corruption punishment since judgment documents released.This study makes the law and economic analysis of the punishment of corruption based on the database established,and discuss the relationship between the position rank and punishment of corruption from the perspective of legal system for the first time.The main conclusions are as follows.Firstly,different positional identities of corrupt officials have different corruption.We make detailed analysis of the difference of number of people involved in corruption,amount of money involved in corruption,type of corruption and latency period of corruption from the different-organization-level,different-unit,different-department and different-rank officials.The results show that the grass-roots organizations are mainly concentrated in the small amount of corruption,while public servants of non-autonomous organizations are more inclined to corrupt in the form of bribery with the larger average amount of corruption.Among the public servants,the administrative units,in particular,the party and the goverment administrations have not only more people involved in corruption,and also the larger amounts of money.The government-affiliated institutions have more people involved in corruption,but with the smaller amounts of money.State-owned enterprises are just the opposite,the number of people involved in the corruption is relatively small,but the amount of corruption is very high,in which the central and local state-owned enterprises in the form of corruption are different.The corruptions of the different departments and administrative positions have huge differences in the number of people involved in the corruption,amount of corruption,corruption form and latency period of corruption.When we know more about the different corruptions of different corrupt officials,we can punish them more effectively.Secondly,provisions of embezzlement and bribery in China indict diminishing marginal effect on the corruption punishment,namely the degree of the punishment strengthening decreases with the increase of amount of corruption.This phenomenon is particularly evident in the cases applicable for the criminal law in 1997,in which sentencing decision depended on rigid standards of the amount of the corruption,which were five thousand,fifty thousand and one hundred thousand seperately.And the law did not adjust with the development of economy and society and the change of corruption situation,which led to a serious imbalance between crime and punishment.The substantial adjustments and revisions on the crime of embezzlement and bribery were made in the amendment(nine)to the Criminal Law in 2015,the sentencing decision depended from rigid standard of the amount of corruption to elastic interval,which to some extent eased the diminishing marginal punishment,but still could not completely eliminate this phenomenon due to the unlimitness of the amount of the corruption and the limitness of prison time.At the same time,the increase in the threshold value of amount of the corruption led to the mitigation of sentencing.Therefore,diversification of the punishment are required,combing the fine punishment,community correction,penal servitude work and imprisonment punishment.Thirdly,positional identities of corrupt officials will effect the corruption punishment.It appeares that higher-ranking corrupt officials have lighter punishment.The amount of corruption of higher-ranking officials may be dozens or even hundreds of ordinary civil servants,but the intensity of punishment doesn’ t increase accordingly.However,when considering the characteristics of the law,the effect of the administrative postion on the corruption punishment is different from the above appreance by controlling the diminishing marginal effect of the punishment.We find that the higher ranking officials have got the heavier punishment.The conclusion that judges are inclined to severely punish high-ranking corrupt officials remains to be drawn including the analysis of the discretion of the judge and system of change of venue.That means the apperance of the lighter punishment of higher-ranking corrupt officials is covered by the character of the law.The higher ranking corrupt officials often get the greater amount of bribery,however,the degree of punishment increase on them becomes less with the more money they take bribe.The joint action of both results in the above appearance.Also,it just fit in with the the traditional concept of official standard "," punishment is not the doctor" existing in China,which further deepens the wrong concept that "the higher rank officials can have the privileges beyond the legal" and has many negative effects on the anti-corruption in China.Finally,Some policy suggestions on punishing corrupt officials effectively are made in the paper.First,the criminal law stipulate clearly that high-ranking corrupt officials will be punished severely,to significantly increase the deterrent effect of the punishment.Second,optimize the resource allocation on the corruption punishment according to the different characteristics of corruption of the different corrupt officials,giving priority to the main areas and prevailed field of corruption and focusing on fighting the corruption with the less corrupt officials,but the larger amount of the corruption,which causes huge damage to the economic and social development.And they should be given severer punishment.Meanwhile,the corruption with more corrupt officials,but the small amount of the corruption,which relates to the daily life of the general public should be pay close attention,with the benevolent punishment.Third,diversify the punishment style,especially play the role of the fine punishment,community correction and penal servitude work with the lower cost and persistent effect.Last,perfect the system of change of venue and combine the punishment and prevention.We should break the relationship of position rank and amount of corrup monies,supervise and restrict the great power of the high-level officials,and reduce the interference of power in the market and judicial fields.This study is innovative in many aspects.Firstly,the relationship between position rank and the punishment of corruption is discussed from the perspective of the legal system for the first time.This study contributes to the research literature in the field of corruption punishment,criminal justice system and official incentive.The discovery that high-ranking corrupt officials actually receive more severe punishment strongly clarifies the wrong understanding of " the punishments of high ranking corrupt officials are lighter".Secondly,The system of change of venue,as a important system of the punishment of corrupt officials,is considered and discussed in the study.The present situation of the implementation of the off-site trial in China and its influence on the punishment of corruption are analyzed using different measure index in change of venue.Finally,this study use micro-data of various level corrupt officials,which was collected and organized based on the criminal verdicts documents of embezzlement and bribery released by the court,which is most complete micro data since China’s Supreme People’s Court requires the the judgment to open.The collection of these data not only provides a new data source for the study of the field of corruption punishment,but also has some enlightenment to the dataacquisition in other fields of economics.Of course,there are still some shortcomings for the study of corruption punishment in China in the paper.For example,we observe the punishment on the arrested and convicted corrupt offcials when using the court verdicts released to study corruption.So we only discussed the severity of the punishment,but ignored the certainty of punishment.In addition,it is difficult to set up an optimal punishment because different officials have different perception on the consequences of punishment in the real world.The relationship between corruption and punishment is not very completely clear,there are still more problems in this field.We need to further refine the research of the subject of corruption,corruption type,the probability,degree and form of corruption punishment,which are worthy of further research in the future.