Study On The Criminal Liability Of The Captain

As an effective means to ensure the captain's performance of duty, criminal liability is widely used abroad. It's inevitable for the captain to be accused of crime when his recklessness causes serious accidents at sea or he offenses his mandatory responsibilities seriously.However, not enough importance, whether in legislation or justice, has been attached to the function of criminal liability in its regulation of the captain's conducts in China. There is no consummate legal system for captain's criminal liability. In the main maritime statutes including CMC, there is no article that regulates crimes committed by the captain and penalties explicitly. Though there are mandatory obligations concerning the captain in law, whether or under what circumstances offences of these obligations such as command and management of vessels should be charged with is not prescribed at all. On the contrary, all offences, serious or not, are punished by administrative sanctions. Meanwhile, there are few cases in which grave accidents at sea caused by the captain's recklessness give rise to criminal liability. The phenomena of undue punishment for such grave offences make against maintenance of shipping order. Therefore, the importance of study on the captain's criminal liability should be recognized to find the limitations in China's legislation to be improved. It is out of this consideration that I choose this subject as my dissertation.There are six parts in the dissertation. The preface covers the background of the theme. The main body of the paper is consisted of four chapters. Chapter One deals with the basic theory on the captain's criminal liability. Chapter Two and Chapter Three address criminal liability caused by grave accidents at sea and offences of mandatory obligations in detail. The last chapter analyses the actuality of China's legislation and puts forward suggestions for modification.