Analysis Of Criminal Punishment In The Elderly

The general principle of lenient punishment to an elderly people who committed acrime, the relative death immunity to an elderly crime and the necessity to pronounceprobation to those aged people are added in the new enacted Amendment8of CriminalLaw of the People’s Republic of China，which fill the gap of the criminal legislation inrespect of the punishment of an elderly crime. However, defects still exist. Generally, thereare two legislative defects. On one hand, there is no specified demarcation to the scope ofthe lenient punishment to an elderly crime as well as no specified demarcation to the elderpeople’s ages for criminal responsibilities, which lead to the omission of the currentlegislation. On the other hand, there is lack of the amendment of the modes of criminalexecution to an elderly crime, such as reduce a penalty and conditional release, whichfinally result in the deviation of criminal execution with the principle of suiting penalty tocrime and criminal responsibility and the principal of compress and modesty. In light ofthis, it seems that it is better to add the scope of lenient punishment in case of the elderlycrime when applying the criminal penalty and further divide the age of criminalresponsibility, meanwhile, relax the condition to apply for reduce a penalty and conditionalrelease to give the elder people more care of humanitarianism.