The Study Of Ancel's New Social Defense Theory

The enlightenment of the new social defense theory can be traced back to ancient Greek times, ancient China and ancient Islamic. At that time, some jurists called for education and transformation to offenders, which could be seen as its initial source. In the later middle of the 19th century, because the original legal theory focused on thinking, the crime prevention and control in the reality had little effect, therefore, a new theory more close to reality birthed and developed-The Positivism Law. The Positivism law about the thinking of social defense made the embryonic form of the new social defense theory. But in the mid-20th century, Gramatica who denied The Positivism Law completely proposed the social defense theory, and developed the subject of the Social Defense. But the radical theory was criticized strongly by other jurists. To ease such tensions, Mark·Ancel reconciled two theories to form a moderate theory which was the new social defense.The new social defense advocated a humanitarian movement that the criminal policies were "non-crime" and "Decriminalization". The theory thought that the application of penalties on the offenders did not intend to punish, but to educate, save, and make them re-socialization in order to achieve the ultimate goal of protecting the society. Ancel abandoned the radical theory of the social defense, recognized criminal liability and criminal law, and called for the punishment by the offenders'personality. He strongly opposed the death penalty and the short-term imprisonment because he believed that this was not conducive to the offenders' re-socialization. He committed to reform the prison system, and took alternative penalty measures to help offenders're-socialization. He also brought the victims into the study of crime, and affected by him, it established a new subject-the victims.Ancel's new social defense theory has had a far reaching impact on the Western countries in criminal law reform and criminal policy, many countries had amended their Criminal Code, and some countries have even named them social Defense Act directly. The theory also had promoted international organizations'establishment and development, such as "The Center of Social Defense" and so on. On the indirect impact of the theory, China's scholars began to reflect whither the "strike hard" policy is reasonable, and promoted the liberal criminal policiesThe significance of drawing on the positive results of the new social defense theory is to improve China's criminal policy of "Kuan Yan Xiang Ji". That is, in strict criminal policies, should take other more reasonable system to effectively curb serious crime such as increasing the maximum penalty of prison and combined punishment and restricting the conditions of probation and parole strictly and so on; In liberal criminal policies, should take a series of concrete measures to educate, move and save criminals in order to help them re-socialization, and achieve the ultimate purpose of social defense, such as limiting the death penalty, establishing the system of daily fines and "record elimination", and setting up and perfecting the system of the victims'compensation.