On Issues With Fine Penalty

Fine penalty is a punishment method that condemn offenders to pay a sum of money for state as a forfeit for an offense. Since the 20th century, fine penalty was given a great concern in western countries and gradually applied in a wide range. Only a few Provisions on fine penalty were made available in penal code of 1979 in China, which have been rarely applied in practice. After the revision of Penal Code in 1979, more items on fine penalty were added and widely performed in justice cases. However, there are many inevitable problems with fine penalty application and performance because provisions prescribed in penal code excessively simple. So it is important to well recognize these problems and to settle them down. The main problems with fine penalty in judicial practice were presented and discussion on the way out were made with this research.Status of fine penalty is the key problem in determining its applicable range. Based on the historical types of penalty structure and status variation of fine penalty in different punishment structure, we suggested that fine penalty had already stepped into the times running neck and neck with free-punishment. At the same time, we analyzed the absolute dependent status of fine penalty in two aspects: legislation and practice of criminal law in our country, accordingly set forth the viewpoint of upgrading fine penalty to principal penalty. To avoid limiting the applicable range after upgraded, we suggested that fine penalty could be applied as additional punishment.Application range of fine penalty should be expanded. First, analyzed the application range and characters of fine penalty. Compared with penal code 1979, the new criminal law has more provisions on fine penalty and the applicable range expanded, but not all mammonist offenders can be simultaneously or separately mulcted and law still inhibits fine penalty applied to most of crime and transgression. According this we put forward that it is reasonable to simultaneously or separately sentence all mammonist offenders fine penalty, and gave us legislating suggests on fine penalty to crime and transgression, mesdemeanours of crime and malice and also explained the reasons. Finally, we discussed issues of applying fine penalty to special offenders: minor criminals and jailbirds, and explained the doubts and controversy that may appear in practice in theory and gave the author' points.Application formats of fine penalty corresponding to criminality is the specific quomodo of fine penalty, and directly reflects the extensiveness in practice. Through illustrating fine penalty applying formats prescribed all over the world and analyzing disadvantages of fine penalty application formats existed in our penal code, I believed that our penal code should be amended as follows: â‘  To natural person , but should apply to mesdemeanours and minor criminality ;â‘¡cut down penal sun of combining necessarily section and increase that of having to combining section, and avoid leading to maladjustment and consensus of serious punishment; â‘¢increase penal sum of choosing-section and apply fine penalty to those crimes with minor perniciousness and those suitable for applying fine punishment; â‘£break down multiple fine system of some accusal into single section system and combining section system, and consequently judge principal penalty and set up penal sum scientifically.Judging the amount of penal sum is important part of fine penalty application. There are two factors affecting the judgement mentioned-above: one is criminal scenario and another is payment capability of defendant. Various opinions on this problem existed in penal code all over the world, but not all of them are scientific and reasonable. So the fact that penal code of our national selected criminal scenario as the exclusive factor in determining penal sum may be ex parte. If not considered the criminals economic circs, the adjudicate may be invalid and harmful to reverence of laws. In my mind, courts should not only think over the criminal scenarios prescr...