Study On Mafia-style Organizational Crimes

Crime of the mafia-style organization is regarded as violent crime which endangers social order seriously. In 1997, the Criminal Law created this mafia-style organization crime and defined it for the first time, providing legal basis for fighting against it. However, due to the vagueness and abstractness of legislation, serious divergence on the understanding of this term occurs both in theoretical and practical aspects. Therefore, the Supreme People's Court and the Standing Committee of National People's Congress made legislative interpretations respectively, aiming at specifying its measurement of penalty. Based on the study on definitions in China, western countries, Hong Kong, and Macau, this article gives proposals to measurement of penalty in legislative practice and legislation improvement.This paper is composed of three parts:The first part deals with conception and features of mafia-style organization. This article first explains the concept of mafia-style organization by analyzing its legislative background and comparing the definitions in foreign countries and Hong Kong and Macau. Then, the author explains the concept with China characteristics theoretically and legislatively. In the perspective of theoretical research, this paper concludes that there exists identity in quality and difference in quantity. Finally, this article defines its extension appropriately by comparing it with similar concepts, such as gang-style organization, criminal group, ordinary criminal group, evil groups, and terrorist groups.Part two deals with legislative definition of mafia-style crime. The purpose of theoretical research is to meet needs in legislative practice. Due to the defects of the definitions, the Supreme People's Court and the Standing Committee of National People's Congress passed legislative interpretations to improve it. Based on the features given in the revised criminal law passed on 25 February,2011, this paper analyzes the components of three kinds of mafia-style crimes and pays special attention to the measurement of penalty, aiming at unifying legislative departments' cognition of them. Part three deals with legislative improvement against mafia-style crime. Although the Supreme People's Court and the Standing Committee of National People's Congress passed legislative interpretations to improve the defects in 1997 definition, there are still some aspects need to be revised. Based on the previous theoretical study, the author gives some proposals on legislative improvement.