Analysis On The Technical Investigation System In China

Technical investigation, a concept in Chinese context, is always adopted by China’sinvestigation organizations in practice to discover clues of a crime, arrest suspects andcollect evidences. Technical investigation serves as an efficient weapon for investigationorganizations to solve major and serious criminal cases due to its characteristics of beingconfidential and technical; and it plays an especially important role in crackingdrug-related crimes and organized crimes. As the implementation of technicalinvestigation infringed citizen’s basic rights such as their freedom of correspondence andprivacy, academia has insisted for years that technical investigation should be put underthe regulation of “Criminal Procedure Law”. People engaged in investigation practice alsohope that “Criminal Procedure Law” could explicitly empower relevant people to carry ontechnical investigation so as to solve the problem that evidences collected throughtechnical investigation could not be adopted. On March14,2012, the fifth session of the11thNational People’s Congress discussed and approved “Decision on the amendment of‘Criminal Procedure Law of People’s Republic of China’”, amending and improving the“Criminal Procedure Law” of China, putting technical investigation under the regulationof “Criminal Procedure Law” and establishing preliminarily China’s technicalinvestigation system. The amendment of “Criminal Procedure Law” is taken as theperspective in the paper to discuss China’s technical investigation system.The paper is divided into four parts. The first part is about the overview of technicalinvestigation, in which the definition of technical investigation given by scholars isanalyzed and evaluated. Besides, the author defines the concept of technical investigationin Chinese context by referring to the regulation of “Criminal Procedure Law”, analyzesits characteristics and functions, distinguishes the concepts such as technical investigationand secret investigation, and defines the research scope of technical investigation, which is also the innovation of the paper.The second part is on the comparison of oversea technical investigation system, inwhich correspondence check-up, a kind of technical investigation measures, is taken as theresearch subject for comparing, evaluating and appreciating the technical investigationsystems of the two law systems.The third part is on the necessity and fundamental principles of constructing China’stechnical investigation system. Starting with the conflict between technical investigationand citizen’s basic rights, the author discusses in this part the necessity of constructingChina’s technical investigation system by combining the condition of the operation ofChina’s technical investigation measures before the amendment of “Criminal ProcedureLaw”, and puts forward the fundamental principles for the construction and operation ofthe technical investigation system in China.The fourth part is on the main content and improvement of China’s technicalinvestigation system, which are also the focus and innovation of this paper. In this part,regulations on technical investigation in “Criminal Procedure Law” are interpreted,drawbacks in legislation are analyzed and suggestions for further improvement are putforward.