Power And Responsibilities Imbalance: Current Dilemma Of China’s Community Correction

Through the one-month "fieldwork" in Community Correction ManagementDivision of Bureau of Justice in J County, Z Province, the author obtained first-handinformation by observation, communication and interviews. The author considers thatthe most fundamental and most serious problem in community correction is thegrassroots judicial and administrative authority’ imbalance of power andresponsibility faced with the practice of "power of small, big responsibilities" issue.Such situation of imbalance of power and responsibility leads grassroots judicial andadministrative authority can not fully exercise powers as community correctionauthority, so the effect of community correction is greatly reduced and it brings a lotof risk and responsibility to the staff. This study builds on the basis of empiricalresearch and access to internal documents which is related to the case materials. Thepaper firstly attempts to show the reality and urgency of the imbalance of power andresponsibility in community correction and furtherly explains the imbalance ofpowers and responsibility embodied in community correction and analyzes theunderlying reasons.This paper identified the risk and responsibility faced with the grassroots judicialand administrative authority in community correction, namely, the risk andresponsibility in the social investigation and assessment before trial, the risk andresponsibility of detaching and oversight, and responsibility of coordinating relevantdepartment to finish the correction with the community correction members. In thesocial investigation and assessment phase before correction, grassroots judicialadministrative and their staff face the respondent directly which leads to the risk ofabuse of power due to the lack of necessary supervision, while it also needs to bear"warranty responsibility" for the members in community correction. Theresponsibility and risk of detaching and oversight are mainly reflect in the communitycorrection members may leave the local place at anytime in daily life, which leads toineffective supervision.The responsibility of coordinating relevant department to finish the correction with the community correction members needs grassrootsjudicial and administrative authority to take advantage of the resources within thesystem or society for community correction.This paper uses the framework of power resource elements,namely, the formerpower resources, power master-object resources, rear power resources. The threeelements of power resources correspond to the problem faced with the grassrootsjudicial and administrative authority: the problem of lack of power configuration incommunity corrections, lack of resource configuration for the exercise of power andrelevant factors affecting the actual exercise of the powers. This paper also tries tofind out the reason of the imbalance between power and responsibility in-depthanalysis and research. In the analyze, the author considers that current dilemma ofimbalance of powers and responsibility of the community corrections mainly due tothe transition of governing authority from the public security organs to judicialadministrative authority, the role of service of judicial and administrative authorityand its office of justice in people’s traditional concept and the judicial andadministrative authority’ marginalized position in all criminal proceeding organs.