On The Application Of The Pecuniary Penalty

As a means of light punishment, the pecuniary penalty has been increasingly favored by countries around the world, and its rate of application is on the rise. So it is in China, where its range and rate of application are expanding gradually. However, the application of the pecuniary penalty has its own specific features with merits and demerits. This thesis is intended to study the application of pecuniary penalty in an attempt to discover its problems and shortcomings exposed in its excess application in judicial practice so as to analyse and solve the problems, foster its strengths and circumvent its weaknesses, give full play to its advantages in punishing crimes, investigate the relevant causes, and offer some countermeasures, thus making it more operative, fair, and standard, restricting and normalizing law enforcement, unifying standards for sentencing, and seeking a rational and perfect connection between criminal law and the pecuniary penalty in order to safeguard judicial authority, fairness and justice.Through an empirical analysis, this thesis analyses and investigates the application of the pecuniary penalty on both theoretical and practical levels, namely, from the perspective of social effects and the protection of the rights of victims and offenders and on the basis of the status quo of the application of the pecuniary penalty by People’s Court of Yuhua District, Changsha, in terms of justice and legislation; and a statistical analysis of the data of1,202cases is given to summarise the worsening situation of applying the pecuniary penalty, including an arbitrary adjudication of the amounts of penalty, imposing penalties while belittling major punishments, imposing penalties while belittling civil compensation, and a serious separation between trial and execution, among others. Then, based upon an observation of the present unhealthy situation of the application of the pecuniary penalty, it offers some proposals for improving the pecuniary penalty, such as scientifically standardising the penalty amounts, moderately raising the status of the pecuniary penalty, changing the single dealing method of the pecuniary penalty, strengthening the supervision of the application of the pecuniary penalty, and formulating the rules and regulations in relation to the implementaion of the pecuniary penalty so as to realise the goals of criminal law and a unity of legal and social effects.