Issues Concerning The Protection Of Criminals' Right To Be Educated

The legal term of"right to be educated"has existed for a long time. However, few scholars probe into the criminals'right to be educated. With the coming of the globalized era of knowledge economy,to receive education has become the basic right of the civil citizens and an important way of pursuing survival and development. The level of a person's education will even affect the implementation of the basic rights prescribed by the constitution. To probe into the criminals'right to be educated not only accelerates the development of Chinese people's human rights, but also safeguards every citizen's right to be educated and other constitutional rights, which is of great theoretical and practical significance.With regard to the theoretical discussion on the nature of citizen's right to be educated, there are mainly three viewpoints: obligation of being educated; right to be and obligation of being educated; right to be educated. Currently, many domestic scholars hold that being educated is a kind of right rather than obligation, such as Professor of Law Gong Xianghe in Hunan University, Professor Yang Chengmin in Beijing University of Science and Technology and Doctor Wen Hui in Beijing University. The author holds the second viewpoint, namely, the citizen's right to be educated has duel characteristics---right and obligation. For instance, if citizens only have the right to be educated rather than the obligation of being educated, this nearly cannot explain the constitutionality of the fact that various countries force to educate the criminals. As to the content of criminals'right to be educated, it should include the nation's obligation to ensure the criminals'right to be educated. The country plays an important role during the process of protecting the criminals'right to be educated.The Chinese Government has always paid much attention to the education of the criminals and has achieved much. However, we should clearly realize the weaknesses in the job of protecting the criminals'right to be educated. The author thinks that this is mainly due to the defects in the Constitution of P. R. C. and other laws. For example, Article 135 in the Constitution stipulates:"The people's courts, the people's procuratorates and the public security organs shall, in handling criminal cases, divide their functions, each taking responsibility for its own work, and they shall coordinate their efforts and check each other to ensure the correct and effective enforcement of the law."This article even has not mentioned the penalty executive organ. The ambiguity of the position and character of the penalty executive organ in constitution leads to the chaos of the institution that is responsible for ensuring the criminals'right to be educated. By comparison, Western countries have formulated special laws on the criminals'right to be educated. Thus, the author holds that we must enact the Law of Education and Redress, construct"educating criminal"schools and perfect the legal system to protect the criminals'right to be educated. Only by doing so can the criminals'right to be educated be truly protected and can the criminals be transformed into"new citizens".