The Criminal Responsibility Of Old People

With the improvement of living standards, and the development of technology and medicine, people live longer than before. So the number of old people becomes larger in our country year by year. For the reason of birth control, the number of new born baby is decreasing every year. Because the two reasons above, the proportion of old people among our country people is becomes larger every year. As matter of a fact, our country stepped into the aging society at the end of last century. With that phenomenon, the problem of old people committing crimes becomes serious gradually. Old people have differences with young people on mind and body, so when comes to commits a crime, old people should not be treats as the same with young adult generally. And the problem of old people committing crimes should be researched according to the specificity of old people. The sense of "respect old people" is an important part of Chinese virtue,and "sympathize with old people" has been adopted by the law maker since ancient china.while since the establishment of Republic of china, there has not been any special law about the old people committing crimes. And also there has been a blank space on the criminal liability of old people.The eighth Criminal Amendment add rules of crime by old people on2010. And the act also establishes the rule that the old people who commits a crime will not be sentenced death and should be punished lighter. This rule is an important development of our country’s criminal law. First, it makes up the blank of our criminal law on old people committing crimes; second it harmonizes the criminal liability and criminal capacity of old people that commit a crime. What is more,this rule complies with the trend of the world criminal law that reducing punishment. And it fits the policy of our law that combine heavy and light punishment together.This thesis researches the old people criminal liability from four parts according to The eighth Criminal Amendment. The first part, the writer generally researches the criminal liability of old people. It includes research about the current situation and features of crime by old people on Chinese history and foreign countries. By the first part, the writer establishes the theoretical basis of the following research. In the second part the writer put up the idea that reduce punishment on old people and analyses the legitimate basis. The third part, the writer researches the current situation and problem of crime by old people from the view of The eighth Criminal Amendment. In the last part, the writer tables some proposals on improvement of lawmaking on criminal liability of old people.