Construction Of China's Sentencing Guidelines

Problems that result from imbalance sentencing in criminal trials exist in many countries.Strictly, either sentence that the criminals have received is too heavy or too light are unjust, which may limit the functions of criminal penalties. The unification of the legal system, the realization of legal justice, even the protection of human rights might be harmed if the imbalance sentencing and its consequences could not be abolished in a timely manner. Therefore, finding an effective way to deal with the imbalance sentencing attracts many academics'attentions in China, and some of them have made a number of sentencing methods, but few can really be applied in judicial practice. Although the Supreme People's Court has already issued some judicial interpretations to unify measurement of penalties for the Courts in different level, dealing with the imbalance sentencing, obviously, cannot only rely on this. Meanwhile, the local Courts also make efforts on this issue for many years. By promulgating guidelines and other documents, the problems rose from the imbalance sentencing have been solved in a great extent. Nevertheless, such guidelines and documents have insuperable difficulties to be applied since their legal validity is questionable. Comparing with China, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is a successful instance on this issue and have a great reference value.In the author's opinion, for the purpose of copying with the above-mentioned problems it is necessary to improve the judges' professional quality and restrict their power in free discretion in China. Further, establishment of a reasonable legal system is the most important way to ensure that the measurement of penalties is just. Consequently, allowing the Supreme People's Court who is entitled the power of judicial interpretation to draft a guideline is realistic and practical. In this paper, theoretical methods including comparison and qualitative-quantitative analysis are adopted in order to construct the'China's Sentencing Guidelines'. This paper demonstrates the necessities and feasibilities of the guideline at the beginning. Then, the experience of China and America has been summarized. In the last part, constructing the'China's Sentencing Guidelines'has been suggested, in which the larceny and the murder are used as examples. Besides, possible difficulties in the proceedings of constructing the guideline and principles of the guideline have also been analyzed.