Drunk Driving Crime Sentencing Balanced Study

Amendment (VIII) to the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China implemented on May1,2011, sets up the crime of dangerous driving. To punish dangerous driving as a crime reflects people’s great concern about public traffic safety, and the country to further strengthen the legislative intent to protect the livelihood of its people. As a public policy, most of the cases that are prosecuted dangerous driving are actually drunken driving in judicial practice. Drunken driving is the abstract dangerous crime, and sentencing balance is most difficult in the current judicial trial. Therefore,1098drunken driving criminal judgments from four grass courts from Yiwu City, Yongkang City, Wucheng and Jindong District of Jinhua city in Zhejiang are chosen as the unit of analysis. By taking the content analysis method of literature research, the author scrutinized the drunken driving book case, cognizance of facts, argument and sentenced to penalties and other content with the purpose of analyzing trials of drunken driving crime cases handled by these courts. Result shows that, although the drunken driving crimes diversify in their characteristics and the pattern of behavior, the trials are far from balanced among the similar cases of the same area, the close time period for the studied grass root courts differ in probation and the forfeit. The major causes of the above phenomenon are:the over generalized legislative provisions, differences in the focus of punishment, the efforts of traffic management departments of the government to deal with the violation of law, the lack of concrete sentencing suggestion from the procuratorial organs, the inconformity in the criteria for imposing penalty and the at the legal level insufficient internal coordination. The drunken driving crime sentencing at the legal level manifests itself as penalty measurement justness, while at the economics level it is actually the efficiency of penalty. Therefore, by Using the method of public policy analysis and applying the theory of economics which assumes the value orientation of the criminal law and efficiency are on the equal footing, this thesis aims to construct the analytical framework of drunken driving sentencing from the perspective of economical analysis of drunken driving. Five questions are to be answered:1) criminal decision model which reveal the decision mechanism of drunken driving is to be constructed on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of private cost and benefit of drunken driving criminals;2) the conditions of probation is discussed based on different patterns of behavior and the difference in private cost and benefit of the dangerous driving criminals;3) the reasonable amount of fine can be decided by internalizing the penalty cost as the result of an innovative application of the Kos theory of transaction cost to the penalty area;4) how to quantify the amount of fine under probation conditions is settled with the construction of substitute function model for the criminal’s being detained will cause their economic losses;5) the suitable proportion of probation is suggested so that the fine counterbalances the benefit from breaking the law. Finally, the author comes to the following recommendations to improve public policy From the perspective of prefecture level City:traffic management departments of the government Standardizes the appliance of law; procuratorial organs further promote the standardization of sentencing recommendations; the local judicial organs specify the sentencing rules of drunken driving and local government Plays a full role.