Study On The Statutory Sentence Of Kidnapping

From criminal law of the People's Republic of China in 1979 to decision on severe punishment of criminals abducting and kidnapping women and children published by Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in 1991 to the present criminal law of the People's Republic of China and improvement of present criminal law by the seventh amendment of criminal law, the statutory sentence of kidnapping has experienced from non existence to existence, from immaturity to maturity. It has obtained great achievement and played an important role in maintaining the stability and unity of society. However, the regulation of statutory punishment for kidnapping still has some defects because of the deeply rooted idea of severe punishment and the imperfection of legislative technique.This thesis includes three parts. The first part is the interpretation of the current status of statutory punishment for kidnapping including its legislative history and existing defects. The second part is theoretical analysis of statutory punishment for kidnapping including its theoretical premises and cause of defects. The third part is discussion of the future development of the statutory sentence of kidnapping including the improvement of justice under the actual state and the construction of justice under the due state.The first part emphasizes the existing defects of statutory sentence of kidnapping based on introduction of its legislative history. The statutory sentence of kidnapping has such defects as the high starting point of punishment; the severe absolute death penalty; the inappropriate pecuniary penalty; the additional unnecessary penalty of confiscation of property.The second part is mainly about theoretical analysis of statutory sentence of kidnapping. It mainly includes two aspects the theoretical premise and root cause of research on statutory sentence of kidnapping. The premise of the research includes the configurative principle of statutory sentence and the configurative way of statutory sentence. The configurative principle contains specific principles and balanced principle. The configurative way includes the completely confirmed statutory sentence, the relatively confirmed statutory sentence and the completely unconfirmed statutory sentence. The root causes for defects of statutory sentence of kidnapping is the deviation of specific principle and balanced principle in statutory sentence and the wrong configurative way. The configurative way of pecuniary penalty in statutory sentence of kidnapping is against requirement of confirmation and specification in specific principle. The high starting point punishment, the severe absolute death penalty, the defects of penalty of property confiscation is the result of against balanced principle in configurative principle of statutory sentence. The absolute death penalty is a rigid and mechanical configurative way of statutory sentence and it should be abandoned. The absolute unconfirmed statutory sentence is against the basic principle of principle of a legally prescribed punishment for a specified crime, which leads to its unnecessary existence.The third part mainly discusses the future development of statutory sentence of kidnapping, that is, how to improve the statutory sentence of kidnapping. Combined with the newly amended the seventh amendment of criminal law, it is practical to explain the improvement of statutory sentence of kidnapping by criminal law. Under the current legislation, the aggravated circumstances should be limited and mitigated circumstances should be explained in detail and the application scope of the classes of statutory sentence should be specified. The following circumstances can be defined as mitigated circumstances such as the hostage is released by the criminal voluntarily and safely; the hostage is not controlled or he is controlled but without injury and no or little property is robbed of by the criminal. The application scope of statutory sentence of aggravated circumstances should be limited from the following aspects such as the death penalty reprieved should be executed appropriately, the mercy on statutory sentence should be paid special attention, aggravated circumstances should be explained in detail. A thorough solution to the unreasonable measurement of statutory sentence of kidnapping is to amend legislation. The concrete strategy is as follows:decrease the starting point of statutory sentence with three years sentence; change absolute death penalty to relative confirmed statutory sentence; change unlimited pecuniary punishment to limited pecuniary punishment; abort punishment of property confiscation.