Certain Issues Concerning The Judicial Identifying Of Gangland-like-organized Crime

Because of current our country is in the economic transition and the period of social transformation, the evil black soil and environment still exist, black evil crime still takes on active signs of rampant in latest years so as to pose a huge threat on the people's lives and property. Therefore, it is of very great significance to make a thoroughly research on this type of criminal activities and accordingly take the appropriate counter-measures.Except the introduction, this dissertation is divided into three chapters.The introduction mainly explains the emergence and development process of gangland-like-organized crime. It also generally introduces the history evolution of laws and regulations concerning above crime. Gangland-like-organized crime differs not only from gangland-organized crime, but also from general joint crime. It has its own characteristics and results from history, economy, social factors and so on. In order to prevent and fight against such a crime, the relevant authorities of the nation, according to the current situation of the gangland-like-organized crime, have formulated a series of laws and regulations which clearly identify the features and punishment of gangland-like organized crime. In judicial practice, the judiciaries always make the determinations on particular case in accordance with the regulations of criminal law with respect to such crime. But the conditions of the number of persons in respect of mafia-style organization and the amount of offences and crimes activities required by such crime have not been stipulated by the provisions.The first chapter contains three sections. Section I discusses the definition of gangland-like-organized crime and organizational features. Such crime could be defined as:an organized crime that three or more non-specific people consciously make up an organization according to the corporatization, gang form or kinship and then, in certain industries or certain regions, continuously engage in illegal and criminal activities which seriously damage the social and economic order and endanger people's lives and property in order to obtain illegal political interests or economic interests. The mafia-style organization should have four basic characteristics as follows according to law:(1) It has formed a stable criminal organization with a larger number of participants and definite and stable organizers, leaders and key members;(2) It gains economic benefits through organized illegal and criminal activities or by other means, and has certain economic strength to support its activities;(3)It repeatedly commits organized illegal and criminal activities through violence, intimidation or by other means, perpetrating outrages, riding roughshod over or cruelly injuring or killing the people; and(4) By way of committing illegal and criminal acts, or taking advantage of the protection and connivance by State functionaries, it plays the bully over an area, and exercises illegal control and wields illegal and enormous influence over a certain area or industry, thus seriously disrupting the economic order and people's daily activities."SectionⅡdiscusses several issues which are worth paying attention to in the process of recognition of gangland-like-organized crime such as organization number, the amount of criminal activity, protective umbrella and so on. On the study of many cases and related laws and regulations, an organization which contains three standing key personnel may be reasonably recognized as a mafia-style organization, and the amount of offences and crimes activities required by gangland-like-organized crime shall be determined according to the differentiation between offences and crimes performed by the actor. Varied opinions have existed for several years in the field of law circle concerning the feature of "protective umbrella" of gangland-like-organized crime. According to the updated amendments to the criminal law (8), such characteristic is not the essential requirement of this crime. We need clearly identify the connotation of main legal forms of "protective umbrella" such as "cover-up" and "connivance" with the aim to accurately defining this behavior of "umbrella". Whether the behavior of "umbrella" could constitute joint crime of gangland-like-organized crime or not should be analyzed according to the specific circumstances of the case and the key is the subject protected by the "umbrella". If the above subject is the actor himself, then the person shall be certified involving in the crime syndicate and recognized to implement joint crime, otherwise he does not constitute joint crime.Based on the understanding of its own meaning of mafia-style organization, we should contrast the mafia-style organization with underworld organization, crime groups, terrorist organizations and evil forces in order to understand the characteristics of mafia-style organization more clearly. Therefore, Section III introduces the differences between the mafia-style organization and other relevant concepts.The second chapter contains two sections. Section I discusses content of the organization, leading and participating. The most common behavior of gangland-like-organized crime is the organizing, leading and joining the mafia-style organization. The behavior of organizing mafia-style organization according to this paper means that the actors advocate, initiate, and set up a mafia-style organization with certain purpose of criminal intent and organize the offenders into a relatively stable criminal organization through activities such as assigning tasks, deploying the members and so on. The behavior of leading mafia-style organization means that the actors who hold a leadership position in the above organization play the planning, directing and coordinating role of such organization's activities. The behavior of joining is also divided into an active participation and common participation. It is commonly to depend on the role in crime made by the actors and the positive attitude performed by actors in adding and committing a criminal act in order to distinguish between active participation and common participation.SectionⅡmakes a research on other two special acts of participation. The first type is that the person joins the mafia-style organization but he does not implement other illegal and criminal activities. The second type is that the person is deceived or coerced into joining the mafia-style organization. The actor of these two types of participation could be both treated as not constituting a crime according to the judicial interpretation of Supreme People's Court.ChapterⅢfocuses on the quantity of crime and the punishment concerning the gangland-like-organized crime. In accordance with the law and the general understanding, it is more appropriate to take the identification methods of concurrent punishment for several crimes for gangland-like-organized crimes in order to achieve the purpose of cracking down on these crimes.