Examination Of The Contemporary Social Harmfulness

Criminal social harmfulness is regarded as the nature of the crime by the criminal-law academia of China. Criminal social harmfulness defines crime from the perspective of sociology. Society is not stationary. Therefore, understanding social harmfulness in a dynamic way is important for legislative and judicial processes.Part I of this paper discusses the definitions of criminal social harmfulness in the context of criminal legislature and judiciary of China and dissertates the academic controversies arising out thereof. Part II deals with the contemporary comprehension of criminal social harmfulness, combined with author's reflections on the nature of the social harmfulness. This part focuses on the characteristics of the contemporary social harmfulness from multiple dimensions such as society, culture and politics, etc. Part III from a historical perspective analyzes various views with regard to social harmfulness at different stages, including the evening of Qing Dynasty, the times of the Republic of China, and several significant phases after New China was born. Such analysis can provide referential values for today's characterization of social harmfulness. Part IV discusses the transformation of standards in evaluating the social harmfulness based on the analysis of the aforementioned three parts. The transformation is both qualitative and quantitative. The former includes the changes of minimum sentence of monetary punishment and age of criminal responsibility while the latter consists of the reflections on the family immunity, and the new crime patterns and the updating of the old crimes prescribed in the Eighth Amendment of the Criminal Law.In general, the examination of the contemporary criminal social harmfulness should take into account various elements such as society, history, politics, culture, common values and so on, and thus can guide the criminal-law legislature and judicial process.