The Retrospect And Prospect Of The Shanghai Juvenile Court

Text:As the pioneer of the China's Reforming and Opening policy, Shanghai plays an important role in the social development in Politics, Economy and Culture. The Juvenile Judiciary of China started from Shanghai establishing Juvenile Criminal Court, which is the first trial in China. Now this Juvenile Court is improving in exploration and practice. Under the circumstance of Juvenile Crime becoming the social problem that urges the society attaching more importance to the protection of juveniles, the innovation of Shanghai Juvenile Criminal Court has a positive sense. In the long time of 20 years from 1984 in which Shanghai established the first Juvenile Criminal Court, the court experienced the steps of building, consolidating, developing, puzzling and reforming. It developed from a single collegial panel of judges to be the combination of Juvenile Criminal Collegial Panel of Judges, Juvenile Criminal Trail Court and Juvenile Case Colligated Trial Court. Finally, the court developed to be a multiformity in which the juvenile criminal cases are appointed to the jurisdiction. Such reformation would be the model to develop the Juvenile Court all over the country. With the changing situation, Shanghai Juvenile Court keeps improving the working method and insists the principle of protecting the society and the juveniles. Based on the faith of prevention complementary with punishment, Shanghai Juvenile Court initiates a juvenile-fitted policy consisting of planting teaching in trial, social investigation, special jury, synthesis ruling, reprieved judgment, supervisory order and round table trial. Such efforts gain a positive effect that the society comes to involving in taking care of and protecting the juveniles. However, with the development of social politics, economy and culture, the up-to-dated complicated juvenile crime and increasing requirement of protecting juveniles'legal rights urges us to reform the juvenile courtroom to be a courthouse. Based on the analysis of all kinds of the necessities and practicalities, it is found that Shanghai has all the conditions to have a Juvenile Courthouse. If we could improve the occasion and push further reformation to establish the first Juvenile Courthouse in Shanghai, the theoretic sense and social value will be fabulous. In the respect of function, Juvenile Courthouse could exercise its function in interrogating criminal juveniles, taking care of ill-conducted juveniles and protecting juveniles'rights. The inner structure of Juvenile Courthouse could be separated into Juvenile Criminal Trial Courtroom, Juvenile Rectification Trial Courtroom and Juvenile Right-protected Trial Courtroom, which enforce above-mentioned three functions. The outer structure of Juvenile Courthouse could adopt the first trial court organizational system which bears the jurisdiction of No.1 and No.2 intermediate courts. Reviewing the splendid history of Shanghai Juvenile Court, we could reasonably believe that the thought to build the first Juvenile Courthouse in Shanghai will come true.