On The Crime Of Dangerous Driving On Lenience And Severity

As the strategic policy of punishment of crimes, the criminal policy ofcombining punishment with leniency, a definite requirement proposed by the SixthPlenum of the16thCPC Central Committee, is the inevitable need of dealing withcurrent crime issues in China and building a harmonious socialist society.Combining punishment with leniency refers to treating crimes differently basedon different cases;“Leniency” does not mean being merciful while “punishment”does not mean aggravated penalty. Combining punishment with leniency meanspunishing crimes in strict accordance with Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Lawand relevant criminal laws based on specific circumstances, achieving “combiningpunishment with leniency, punishing according to crimes”.With the development of social economy, thousand of households possess motorvehicles. Consequently, there are lots of accidents caused by drunk driving, whichhave become a new form of delinquency that seriously endangers people’s life safety.Since the implementation of the amended Road Traffic Safety law and Amendment toCriminal Law (VIII) in May1,2011,“drunk driving is criminalized” has been the hotissue which receives attention from media and websites. News about “the first onewho is criminalized due to drunk driving” being ferreted out are continuous, amongwhich, there are24-year-old senior student from famous university,55-year-oldtricycle driver as well as drivers who argue with others due to scrape. For a moment,the reports on “drunk driving accidents” are overspread and it seems that condemningthe drunk driving behavior is the trend. However, the circumstances of drunk drivingare complicated and therefore, it is not in accordance with the criminal policy ofcombining punishment with leniency or the policy of “punishing the minority,educating and saving the majority” if all the drunk driving cases are treated in thesame way.From the decision in which “drunk driving is criminalized”, it can be seen thatthere are not only the problem of “essence”, that is, whether drunk driving behavior constitutes a crime or not and whether it shall be punished by criminal penalty; butalso the problem of “degree” concerning punishment, that is, measurement of penalty.Punishing drunk drivers is not the purpose, but the means. The fundamental goal is towarn the drunk drivers to prevent them from committing crimes as well as to educateothers to abide by laws. The issue of drunk driving shall be considered from theperspectives of subjective state of mind, harmful consequence and whether thecircumstance of crime is bad, thus the punishment shall be based on the physical truth.This needs to be improved in future practice in order to adapt to the political need ofbuilding a harmonious socialist society.This paper tries to explain the importance of criminal policy of combiningpunishment with leniency in current judicial activities through analysis on its basicmeaning and the historical background and practical significance; the consummateconception and specific application of criminal policy of combining punishment withleniency in juridical practice are proposed through the analysis on “essence” and“degree” of dealing with drunk driving cases. It is expected that this can be used asreference for criminal policy of combining punishment with leniency and practice todeal with drunk driving cases and resolve conflicts better, to improve judicialauthority and gain recognition from the masses as well as to reach the unification oflegal and social effects.