The Research On The System Of Age Of Criminal Responsibility

The age of criminal responsibility is a critical factor to decide whether a behavioral person should bear criminal responsibility and how much to bear. It has much to do with the application of penalties and legal proceedings. So it is very important in every country's theory of criminal law no matter whether it is a country of continental genealogy of law, or a country of British-American genealogy of law, or the socialist country such as ChinaA series of provision concerning the age of criminal responsibility in a country's criminal law is called the system of age of criminal responsibility. It was established long after the foundation of a country and penal statute system with the emergence of subjective responsibility-belonging system. Generally speaking, the system of age of criminal responsibility started from the slave society and got further development in the feudal society. The modem criminal responsibility age system began in the period of capitalist society. At present the system lays emphasis on the human-right protection, it agrees with the criminal policy of non-crime, non-penalty. The kernel content system is the division of criminal responsibility age level. Furthermore, it also consists of the rules on the management of the absolute non-criminal responsibility age person and the special age exempting from punishment, procedure provisions on the age of responsibility and the system of using leniency in meting out punishment or mitigating a punishment to a special criminal responsibility age person. In my opinion, the criminal responsibility system has the function of protecting the society and human rights, the latter is more important. Concretely, it has the guilt emergence function, penalty rationality function, procedure distinction function, the function of preventing from breaking the law and punishment function. The criminal responsibility age system used in our country now has some deficiencies. For example, it does not regulate the oldest age of criminal responsibility, the criterion to establish the range of criminal responsibility that an age person should bear is not so good. I think, if we want to improve and perfect our criminal responsibility age system, we must establish the oldest age, introduce attached requirment age system, gauge the management to the absolute non- criminal responsibility age person and the special criminal responsibility age exempting from punishment, properly constitute the penalty system that can be applied to special criminal responsibility age person and the special judicial procedure.