The Theoretical Foundation And The Institution Construction Of Community-based Correction

When observing the history of the development of Criminal Code, it is not difficult to find that the overall trend of penalties develops from harshness toward alleviation, from barbarism to civilization. Correspondingly, the enforcement of sentences has also gone through a process of non-social-oriented to social-oriented, closeness to openness.Community-based Correction stands for the development and trends of executions around the world. To this end, in July 2003, China has carried out early experiments of community correction in some areas. Community Correction is a system of execution in which social factors are emphasized, so that offenders can revert to the society, restore their lack of personalities and reshape their beliefs in line with normal life of society. The traditional execution environment of imprisonment is not conducive to re-socialization of offenders, and the transformation efficiency of imprisonment execution is extremely limited, so the implementation of community correction system in China is absolutely necessary. Different from the traditional doctrine, community correction system, as a new type of execution system, has just begun in China. With no mature model both in theory and in practice, it is urgent to carry out in-depth theoretical study and to explore operational practice patterns. In this context, the need to strengthen the theoretical study of community correction becomes more pressing. As an exploratory study, this paper, with jurisprudence, sociology and many other academic knowledge as its guide, introduces the ideological evolution of community correction, its value, China's social basis to carry out it and so on, analyzes and discusses the theoretical and practical experience of foreign community correction systems for China to follow, and then after evaluation and analysis of community correction mode under experiment in China, concludes in the end with an assumption to build a new community correction mode suitable to China's national conditions. To be specific, apart from incipit and conclusion, the author of this paper will carry out the writing in the following four aspects:Part I: Introduction. This part proceeds from the"Notice Of Experimental Work On The Development Of Community Correction"issued on July 10, 2003, raises questions, With the methods of historical research and comparative study, this part discusses in detail the theoretical basis for community correction. In this section, the article carries out a detailed theoretical analysis of the theoretical basis for community correction from seven main perspectives. In the process, it is not difficult to conclude that the emergence of community correction system, as a new concept stemming from people's re-examination of the conflicts between penalty and the economic principle of execution, is the inevitable result of the development of penalty. It subsists precisely on the intersection and brace of the theories above, and generates the theoretical background for educational penalty theory. On the premise of personality correction and with the goal of reverting offenders to society, community correction fully embodies the humane value of execution and modesty ideology of penalty, while reflecting the economic principle of execution and theories of criminal compensation. It can be said to be the profound development of the reversion theory and the inevitable destination of the socialization of imprisonment.Part II: practical reality and academic potential for community correction to be implemented in China.Community Correction indubitably implies enormous value. An important question follows, however, that is concerned with the necessity of implementing this mode of execution from the Western developed countries in our country. In this regard, I believe that community correction is a more humane form of regulation, which weakens offender's"labeling effect"and reflects the people-centered humanistic spirit. With administration in a civilized manner and appropriate humanistic care, it respects the dignity of correction objects, so that they can recover from lack of social personality, and better revert to the community; through the help of social forces like communities, civil society organizations and volunteers, it not only takes full advantage of the flexible features of communities as grass-roots organizations to integrate the society, but builds a favorable environment for offenders to re-socialize easily as well; by solving problems in aspects like daily life and employment for correction objects, it can weaken their social antagonism, which is beneficial for building long-term mechanism to prevent and reduce crime, and achieving the purpose of maintaining social security and stability; so the practical necessities is very profound for Community-based Correction to come to localization.Community Correction, as a social-oriented and open execution mode, results from the social and economic development to a certain extent, while its implementation necessarily needs certain economic and social conditions as a support, such as degree of civilization and openness of society, acceptance capacity and correction capabilities of community toward offenders etc. In my opinion, China is initially provided with the practical social conditions to carry out Community-based Correction. They are as follows:Social infrastructure - In the current Chinese society, along with the gradual separation of civil society and political state, the binary model of social structure has taken shape and a relatively independent civil society is growing up, which provided the necessary social foundation for the community correction.The foundation of society and public opinion– Offenders'awareness of rights has strengthened and the level of human rights protection has enhanced, which is bound to provide a solid foundation of society and public opinion for the theoretical development of Community-based Correction.Theoretical foundation - With the successful evolution of unitary structure of our society to binary structure, offenders'enhanced awareness of rights and continuous improvement of protection the rights, more and more scholars begin to turn their research perspective to perpetrators, paying attention to the causes of perpetrators and the legitimate solutions to problems concerned with perpetrators. The shift of research perspective of criminal law from crime to perpetrators is laying a solid theoretical foundation for Community-based Correction to emerge in China.Part III: By reading up the literature, I use comparative study to dialectically elaborate deficiencies in the pilot work of community correction.Since the government put Community Correction on the agenda as an important element of Chinese judicial reform during the NPC and CPPCC held in March 2003, Community Correction has shown its vitality in the pilot program. It is very helpful in relieving overcrowded prisons, saving execution resources, transforming criminals, making penalties more effective. However, as China's community correction has still been in the initial exploratory stage, problems emerge both in legislation and practice, such as identification of legal status of implementers, identification of inmates, arrangement of detailed correctional measure and procedural guarantees. More efforts are needed to develop community correction. The following part will focus on the establishment and completion of China's community correction system. Part IV: In order to improve China's community correction system, I put forward my suggestions and ideas, in order to make contribution to the construction of our Community-based Correction system.As mentioned in the part three, China's current community correction system has a lot of flaws and problems. Therefore, I will try to complete the system in terms of two aspects. For one, transformation of ideas, which is updating penalty concept; for another, improvement of legislation, that is, reconstructing community correction legal system.The core of problems is no corresponding regulation to abide by. Therefore, reconstruction of laws and regulations about China's community correction system will be the focus of this part. The modification and improvement of the system will be explained in the perspective of criminal substantive law (Criminal Code) and the criminal procedure Act (Law of Criminal Procedure).For problems in criminal substantive law (Criminal Code), I will start the study with difference among objects of the community correction. Suggestions will be given based five kinds of objects described by the most authoritative instrument issued in pilot programs.For deficiencies in criminal procedure Act (Law of Criminal Procedure), I will put forward initial tentative plan in two aspects -- unifying implementing organizations, and integrating execution resources, in order to complement the improvement of criminal substantive law (Criminal Code).