The Basis Of Commutation And Improvement In China's Current Commutation System

Commtation is one of China's current criminal law enforcement system. In the narrower sense, the commutation of the sentence refers to the penalty system that for the offender who is under control, or criminal detention, or fixted-term imprisonment or life imprisonment, during the punishment process, appropriately mitigate their verdict penalty, based on their performance or meritorious performance of repentance.Generalized commutation of the sentence also includes death penalty commutation additional penalty commutation due to principal penalty change, as well as amnesty. However, commutation do not change the original sentence nor deny the validity of the original one, but rather a criminal reward to the offender for the good performance or their decreased dangerousness in the process of implementation. Therefore, commutation system is conducive to promoting self-discipline and self-motivation of perpetrators, encouraging their efforts to transform the inner power. Meanwhile it also be beneficial to transform the psychological need of shorter sentences to inner motivation of self-remolding, and further transform the aforementioned willpower to practical action. But China's current commutation system is not perfect in many ways, so that people began to wonder whether the system is conducive to rebuilding criminals, crime prevention, and even some commentators proposed to abolish the commutation system. However, as one of an important and long-standing system in the implementation of China's punishment system, commutation's existence must has it's own reasons. Because of this, this paper attempts to find the reasonable bases for the rationality of the legitimacy of commutation system through searching of the vastness of criminal law theory, and hope that under the direction of the research, consummate China's current commutation system to enable them to fully play it's role to reform criminals and prevent crime, so as to achieve the purpose of punishment.The main contents of this article are divided into two parts.The first part composes of the introduction, through summarization of the current commutation system, put forward the theoretical meaning and practical significance of the study.The second part composes of the main body, including an overview of the commutation system, and through the analysis of relevant criminal law to prove the legitimacy of the commutation. On this basis, put forward the recommendation for the perfection of the current commutation system.First, make an overview of our current commutation system and affirm it has a positive significance.Second, the commutation of the sentence is an implementation system, so the existence of commutation should be relied on the base of the punishment system. Therefore, this article start to prove the legitimacy of the commutation according to the base of the penalty - retribution theory and utilitarianism.Third, the commutation of the sentence is to shorten the time of the actual implementation of the sentence based on the prisoners performance, then whether the commutation of the sentence is in violation of the principle of the balance of crime? Therefore, this article, through the analysis of the principle of balance of crime and the determination of the nature of the commutation of the sentence, to demonstrate commutation is in line with the principle of balance of crime and thus prove its legitimacy.Fourth, the criminal policy is national strategy for crime prevention and control, the country's criminal legislation plays a guiding role in the criminal justice activities. Commutation of the sentence as an execution system, should also be subject to China's criminal policy guidance. Therefore, this article will sentence the criminal policy as another basis through the analysis of China's criminal policy, to demonstrate the commutation of the sentence is in line with the value pursuit of criminal policy.Fifth, through the analysis of aforementioned retribution theory and utilitarian theory, the principle of balance of crime and our criminal policy, the article confirmed the legitimacy of the commutation system and its positive meaning. Finally this article try to take a reconsideration of the drawbacks of the current commutation system and intend to put forward some related proposals such as: addition of the test period and the withdrawal system; complete the prerequisite for commutation system; provide specific provisions for the prerequisite, extent and time interval for commutation of juvenile offenders, elderly offenders and other criminals; increase in the provisions that does not apply to the commutation; and perfect the supervision mechanisms for commutation. These methods hope to make commutation system more efficient, and more suitable for legitimacy.