Measures For Improving Chinese Criminal Victims’ Right Protection Status

This paper makes a survey of current criminal victim’s right status in China and findsthat there are lots of flaws in Chinese criminal victim right protection system. Firstly,criminal victims lack sufficient right to be informed and participation right in all stagesincluding investigating, reviewing and making a decision of prosecution, bringing to trial andexecuting, who are just equal to the witness in terms of status. Secondly, criminal victims’civil compensation right also are deprived completely, namely the Supreme People’s Courtdeprives the victim’s right of instituting the incidental civil action in the cases of infringingon property by means of judicial interpretation, the victims suffered from serious mentaldamage whose right of claming for damage awards and the victims crippled or taken off bythe criminal and their family dependants’ right of claiming for compensation for disabilityand death. Thirdly, the supporting mechanism of victims’ right realization is imperfect.Criminal victims are hard to obtain legal aid due to high standard of requirements and noguarantee set for legal aid; since the attorney agent of victims is allowed to get involved inthe criminal lawsuit late, they are difficult to seek for help from legal professionals.Besides, this paper conducts an analysis of the causes for criminal victims’ lack of rightin China and proposed some measures for improving Chinese criminal victims’ right statusby drawing lessons from foreign legislation. Firstly, the victims should be given intact rightof action, the Criminal Procedure Law should be revised and the criminal victims’ right to beinformed and participation right in all stages including investigating, reviewing and making adecision of prosecution, bringing to trial and executing, should be improved. Secondly, thesupporting mechanism of victims’ right realization should be perfected. The Regulations onLegal Aid should be revised to cancel the requirement for providing special type of criminalvictim with legal aid; The Criminal Procedure Law should be modified to allow the victimsto entrust agent ad litem at any time. Thirdly, relative judicial interpretation should becancelled to restitute criminal victims’ right to claim for civil compensation. To be specific,the victim’s right of instituting the incidental civil action in the cases of infringing onproperty by means of judicial interpretation, the victims suffered from serious mental damagewhose right of claming for damage awards and the victims crippled or taken off by the criminal and their family dependants’ right of claiming for compensation for disability anddeath should be restituted. Above all, the national compensation system for criminal victimsshould be established in China. This system should be set up based on the national conditionsof China and the reference of foreign state compensation by prescribing the compensationobjects, range, sum, capital source and procedure respectively.