On The Application Of Pecuniary Penalty

The dramatic increase in the application of pecuniary penalty in the current criminal law in our country makes the criminal law's transformation from the penal system in which punishment against freedom is the main punitive method in 1979 to the new system in which punishment against freedom laid equally with property-oriented penalties. To properly apply pecuniary penalty requires that we should ascertain the nature of pecuniary penalty. In the author's opinion, the nature of pecuniary penalty is that it is a lighter penalty to deprive the criminal of some part of his legal property. On the dissection of the nature, the dissertation mainly demonstrates the problems of the application of pecuniary penalty from three aspects as follows: The first problem is to decide whether to apply pecuniary penalty when the court imposes the punishment on the criminal. The author suggests that the application of the optional-type and compound-type pecuniary penalty should follow the principle of individualization of punishment, mainly use the single-type pecuniary penalty, and that profit-seeking offence is the main object of the application of pecuniary penalty, negligent crime should be imposed on pecuniary penalty, statutory offence is more suitable for applying the pecuniary penalty than natural crime. The second problem is how to apply pecuniary penalty. The author puts forwards the opinions that crime circumstances are the decisive factors to determine the amount of pecuniary penalty. When the court imposes the pecuniary penalty, it should take the criminal's economic condition into consideration, which should be linked with the imposition of punishment against freedom, and so less pecuniary penalty imposed leads to more punishment against freedom. On the contrary, more pecuniary penalty leads to less punishment against freedom. And the author makes some inquiries into the fixation of the amount of unlimited fine, limited fine and concurrent fine. The third problem is to seek the countermeasures to over come the difficulties in implement of pecuniary penalty. Overcoming the difficulties can't be restricted to the implement stage, should set out from the whole operation mechanism of pecuniary penalty, in details, in order to overcome the difficulties in implement of pecuniary we should construct the guarantee mechanism, improve the discretionary mechanism, perfect the implemental mechanism by dividing the difficulties into multiple layers. The demonstrations of application of pecuniary penalty from three aspects mentioned above in this dissertation, all carry through the red thread of the recognition of the nature of pecuniary penalty, and in it, the author puts forwards the correspondent views, and hopes that the superficial views can give some guidance and support to the imposition of pecuniary penalty in theory for the practical institutions.