A Study On Criminal Reconciliation System In China

In the study of criminal reconciliation system in our country the criminalreconciliation system belongs to an important system in criminal judicial domain, andits existence and development embody the change of criminal justice ideas. Thissystem derives from western criminal justice practices and it is embodied in thecriminal justice practices of countries with civil law system and common law system.Meanwhile it is combined with legal and cultural traditions of different countries andembodies different features. In the essay “Victim-Offender Mediation Programs: anExploration of Practice and Theoretical Frameworks” by the American criminologistJohn R Gehm, he interpreted the criminal reconciliation system through “restorativejustice theory”,“equity theory” and “narrative theory” comprehensively. At the sametime, this modern criminal justice system valuing equity and human rights isconsistent with the thinking stressing “harmony” of Chinese traditional culturalconcepts and criminal justice idea. Therefore it is natural that this system is absorbedby Chinese criminal justice idea and exists in the criminal justice practices for a longtime. The establishment of this system promotes the legal status of victims, suppliesopportunities for the infringers to repent their error and make amends, offers systemguarantee for law-executors to determine the punishment reasonably, provides a newway for the whole society in easing tense social relations and creates the conditionsfor the criminal justice in saving litigation cost and improving judicial efficiency. Inthe environment of building harmonious socialist society, the establishment andregulation of criminal reconciliation system embodies our attention and stress on theharmonious social idea.This system derives from western criminal justice practicesand meanwhile it has an integrating point with Chinese traditional cultural conceptsand criminal justice ideas. The establishment of this system plays a positive role inbenefit protection of victims and injurers, law enforcement guarantee oflaw-executors, integrated social interest and judicial cost savings. Meanwhilecriminal reconciliation system can play an important role in case distributing and canplay as the circumstance of sentencing in criminal cases. Reconciliation system has been an existence for a very long time criminal and playing a positive role in Chinesecriminal justice practices; however, the regulated standard legal documents arelow-level and unsystematic. Guided only by “criminal policy of combiningpunishment with leniency” for the existence of extenuatory sentencing circumstancesin practices might go against the system playing its roles. In the process of changingthe Criminal Procedural Law, a second chapter “judicial proceedings in publicprosecution case of reconciliation of the litigants” making an explicit stipulation isadded specially in the volume of “special procedures”, which is a historical progress.The long-term widely applied and important criminal reconciliation system in justicepractices has been regulated in law systematically and authoritatively and itslegislation hierarchy has risen to the level of “legislation of National People’sCongress”. At the same time we should notice that there is room for improvement andthere are many problems needing to be solved such as narrow applicable range ofcases, disharmony among different department laws and rough legal provisionsneeding refined and so on in the current legal provisions on criminal reconciliationsystemBases on the above-mentioned problems, starting from the change of criminalprocedural law the author clears the theoretical foundation of criminal reconciliationsystem, elaborates its significance and roles, analyzes the historic and currentcriminal reconciliation system, points out the shortcomings and puts forwardsolutions such as enlarging applicable range of criminal reconciliation system,improving the legislation system of criminal reconciliation system and refining theoperating procedure of criminal reconciliation system and establishing follow-upsupervision mechanism through methods of historical research, literature analysis,contrastive study and multidisciplinary comprehensive analysis in this thesis, aimingat providing beneficial references for the improvement of criminal reconciliationsystem.