On The Principle Of Criminal Responsibility,

Criminal responsibility is the basic problem of the criminal legislation and justice, and the inner basis of the criminal law. In the perspective of criminal legislation, the establishment, penalty, time limit, parole, lenient sentence or heavier punishment of crimes is around the legislation and the solution of the criminal responsibility of the act. In the perspective of justice, a criminal case is from the registration and detection to litigation, the identity of accusation and penalty to the execution, which are all around the crime. The criminal responsibility is not abstract but exists with the crime and are objective. The formation and development of the criminal responsibility directly impel the revolution of the systems of criminal penalty and the justice. Hence, the criminal responsibility should be laid on a reasonable foundation. The understanding of the foundation of the criminal responsibility can be divided into two aspects: first, from the perspective of nation, the foundation of criminal responsibility demonstrates what is the reason for nation to make the actors to undertake criminal responsibility; second, from the perspective of criminal, the foundation of the criminal responsibility is to illustrate why the criminal shall take responsibility. The research on the foundation of the criminal responsibility can not only demonstrate the rationality but also helpful to consummate the criminal legislation and useful to prevent crimes and fulfil the justice and equality.The first chapter of this paper starts from the relationship of penalty and criminal responsibility, based on the development of the theory of criminal law and criminology, and makes discussion on the transformation of the way of penalty, thought and function and purpose, and attributes this evolvement to the development of the criminal responsibility. This paper makes a summary on the various theories of the nature of criminal responsibility in the academies of foreign countries, and reflects the progress of the research and the rational knowledge of criminal responsibility, promoting the important social meaning of the transformation from criminal act to criminals. Both criminal responsibility and penalty are closely related to crime, while they are close to each other. The criminal responsibility is the foundation of the penalty, and the penalty is one kind of solution to criminal responsibility. However, the overusing of penalty would causes the neglect of criminal responsibility and the advancement on the seriousness of some crimes.The key point of the second chapter is to illustrate the foundation of criminal responsibility. Theory of responsibility on will, theory of responsibility on character and theory of responsibility on personality are important theories of the foundation of criminal responsibility and the different understanding of the academy of criminal classicism and the academy of criminal positivism based on non-determinism and determinism. Making personal threat the foundation of the criminal responsibility is different from the opinion—the Tatbestand constitutes the sole basis of criminal responsibility, supported by most scholars in China. However, the theory of personal threat has important practical meaning to the current criminal status, penalty system, the government of nation. This paper is based on materialism, emphasizing that the comparatively free will does not conflict with the personal threat, and the actor makes choice on free will. The act is the surface representation of will and choice, and the criminal shall then be responsible to the moral and legal responsibility, and the country could identify the criminal responsibility according to the consistency between the malice and the damage of the act.The third chapter of this paper consider penalty is not the only way to make criminal responsibility, and mainly illustrates that the pattern of penalty shall be based on the criminal responsibility, otherwise the function of preventing crimes would fail, to counter with the deficiencies in the criminal legislation of China. This paper makes simple discussion on the recovery justice, negotiation justice and personality penalty in the hope of being useful to the understanding of the criminal responsibility and finding an effective way to control, prevent crimes and educate criminals.