Study On Criminal Amount

Criminal amount is the basic element or factor to determine whether the crime is convicted and to identify the corresponding penalty and sentencing, which widely appears in Chinese Criminal Code and Criminal judicial explanation documents, thus received wide and long-term attention from the circle of criminal jurisprudence.Criminal amount is of significant theoretical implication and legal value in the actual application of criminal law. It also involves basic legal values such as accurate punishment of criminals and the impartial application of laws. In the market economy society, the establishment and maintenance of social relationship depends on property or economic interests. As the legal position of property crime and economic crime in the whole crime system will be drastically hoisted because of the increase of crime amount, criminal amount is of universal significance for the implementation of criminal law and the application of criminal penalty.If we make a careful examination of both domestic and international criminal legislation, we will find that there is no concepts and legislation of crime of amount and crime of quantity. The concepts of crime of amount and crime of quantity are just concepts introduced by Chinese scholars, which lacks both theoretical foundation and logic support. What is usually called crime of amount and crime of quantity actually refers to different crime categories that are related to the issue of amount in the identification of kinds of punishment and the actual application of penalty. In terms of linguistics, such kind of criminals can only be termed as criminals related to number and amount. Perhaps, we use the term crimes of amount in the meaning that is not so strict out of the need of research. However, the defect of the concept crimes of amount is obvious, which is the so-called crime of amount has no common crime objects, nor does it have common composition elements. In the application of penalty, there is no common principle to base on. Because of this, there is no such crime categories as crime of amount, crime of quantity and crimes of amount but only criminal amount.In terms of crime categories, criminal amount can be divided into the following kinds: illegal gains amount, gained amount, illicit divided amount, the joined amount, the legislative amount and judicial amount. But from the perspective of judicial practice, criminal amount can mainly be divided into the two categories: condemnation amount and sentencing amount. Shown on legislation, criminal amount has nothing to do with condemnation and sentencing. On legislation patterns, we should either take theconcrete amount as the criterion for determining crime formation and measurement of penalty, or regard criminal amount as the leading factor in measurement of penalty.The issue of criminal amount is also of special implication on the constitution and sentencing of joint crimes. Identification of the criminal amount of different complice should be determined according to different standard. The total criminal amount of the criminal group should be taken as the standard to condemn and sentence the chief of the criminal group. Other leading criminals should undertake criminal responsibility according to the criminal amount that they take part in, organize and command. Accessorial criminals should undertake the criminal responsibility according to the amount of the illegal gains that they are involved in. As for coerced accomplice, their criminal responsibility should be identified according to the regulations of China's Criminal Code and the gains amount that they obtain or are involved in.However, the comprehensive analysis of legislation and regulation of criminal amount shows that there are numerous defects and deficiencies in current criminal legislation about the regulation of criminal amount, such as the diversification of legislation patterns, which leas to the serious imbalance between crimes and areas. Therefore, establishing legislation principles on criminal amount and unified legislation pa...