Research On The Feasibility Of Making The Conduct Of "Intentionally Not Rescue People In Danger" Into A Crime

“Intentionally not rescue people in danger” generally refers to theconduct of not performing rescue when seeing people faced with mortaldanger. As such events happens more and more frequently, the debate onwhether such conduct should be made into a crime is boiling. However, theCrime of intentionally not rescue people in danger has not been set up yetin current Chinese Criminal Law. Due to this reason, different judicialpractice of such cases has existed for a long time.This article will firstly clarify the concept of “Intentionally not rescuepeople in danger”, then study the possibility, necessity and feasibilityof making such conduct into a crime from the perspective of ethics,jurisprudence, criminal law theory as well as comparative law and analysesome typical judicial cases. On this basis, the author intends to proposea legislation idea to settle the theoretical and practical controversy onthe issue. The full text is divided into three parts. In the first part, the authordefined the concept of “Intentionally not rescue people in danger” whichis discussed in this article as “the conduct of a person who does not bearany specific responsibilities or obligations, knowing others are facingwith mortal danger and in urgent need of salvation, being able to rescue,and the rescue will cause no harm to himself or any third party butintentionally not doing so. To the author’s opinion, there are threefactors which have an impact on the responsibility of such conduct: theability to rescue, how close are the parties related to each other andin which environment the danger occurs.In the second part, the author analyzes the controversial opinions on thepossibility, necessity and feasibility of turning the non-rescue conductinto a crime. To the author’s point of view, to rescue a person in dangeris a grave moral obligation, however, the moral and legal boundary changesall the time, and it is obviously acceptable to sacrifice very littlefreedom in exchange for the possibility of other’s survival, so bringingthe conduct up to a crime not only fits with the Anticipated Possibilityin Criminal Law but also contributes to raising the level of civic virtue.The author believe that this kind of conduct is of such great social harmfulconsequences that it must be deemed as a criminal conduct. Other means ofregulation would not be sufficient to supress it, thus criminal legislationhas to play its role. In regards to the feasibility aspect, as there aremany similar articles in ancient Chinese Criminal Law and Foreignlegislation, we can borrow valuable ideas from them. The author proposesthat if the non-rescuer forms a “close living community” with the personin danger, or has “exclusive dominant” over the danger, his non-rescuewill commit a crime, otherwise won’t.“Close living community” meansa living community in which the members highly trust each other. “Exclusive dominant” means the superior power the non-rescuer obtainsover any other person in preventing the occurrence of harmful resultsendowed by the specific enviroment uner which the danger happens.In the third part, the author proposes to add a “Crime of intentionallynot rescue people in danger” to the current Criminal Law of PRC, explainsits constitutive elements and analyses the difference between this crimeand several confusive ones. In accordance with the extent of socialharmfulness of such conduct, non-rescuers will generally be sentenced tofixed-term imprisonment of not more than3years, criminal detention orpublic surveillance and shall also, or shall only, be fined; if theconsequences are especially serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-termimprisonment of not more than3years but not more than5years.Last but not the least, although the non-rescue conduct of severe socialharmfulness can be regulated by criminal legislation, socialadministrators should improve the rights and interests protection systemfor the rescuers as soon as possible as well as make up legal loophole,make judicial decisions perform its due fuction of displaying justice andguide public media properly in order to decrease non-rescue phenominonefficiently.