The Study On System Of Sealing Minors’ Criminal Records

The Criminal Procedure Law 2013 officially establishes the system of sealing minors’ criminal records. How is the system operated in judicial practice? Which problems it has? In which aspects it can be improved? By investigating the implementation situation of the system, this paper analyzes the potential problems and puts forward suggestions for improvement on that basis. Except the introduction part, this paper is composed of four parts.Part One analyzes the legal norms of the system of sealing minors’ criminal records. The basic connotation of the system of sealing minors’ criminal records is to help minors return to society smoothly by limiting the disclosure of their criminal records. Since the 21 th century, the crime problem of minors has been increasingly prominent. In order to prevent criminal records from causing negative effects on minors, it is very necessary to establish the system of sealing minors’ criminal records. At the present stage, Chinese law has established the basic framework of the system of sealing minors’ criminal records.Part Two conducts an empirical study on the system of sealing minors’ criminal records. The subjects of the sealing are mainly judicial organs; the subjects of inquiry include judicial organs and other organs stipulated by the State; other subjects in the forming process of criminal records are the litigant participants in criminal cases; normative documents include the Decision Letter on Sealing Minors’ Criminal Records and the Notice on Sealing Minors’ Criminal Records; the place for the sealing has certain physical and data space; the contents to be sealed are the detailed materials of criminal cases; the sealing is applicable to non-prosecution cases and joint offense cases; the sealing include unconditional sealing and conditional sealing; the sealing can be initiated by authority or by application; the efficacy of the sealing includes that minors are exempted from the obligation to report their criminal records and the personnel responsible for the sealing should keep confidential the criminal records; minors’ criminal records may only be inquired as necessary for handling a case and as prescribed by relevant national provisions; the inquiry organs need to file a written application to the sealing organs; the duty of confidentiality requires other personnel who knows the particulars of the case to keep them confidential.Part Three analyzes the defects of the system of sealing minors’ criminal records. In the normative aspect, the legal provisions concerning the sealing of criminal records are not clear enough; the behaviors of violating the system are not supervised and sanctioned sufficiently; the provisions concerning the sealing of criminal records are inconsistent with the relevant provisions of other laws. In the non-normative aspect, criminal records are likely to be disclosed in various non-formal ways; the education and correction work of judicial organs is likely to bring the criminal records into the open; minor offenders still face numerous obstacles when returning to society; the mechanism of sealing criminal records lacks the participation of victims.Part Four is about the perfection of the system of sealing minors’ criminal records. Firstly, legislative organs should perfect the Criminal Law to explicitly stipulate the inquiry subjects and conditions of the sealing of criminal records and that the crimes committed by minors under the age of 18 shall not constitute special recidivism and drug recidivism. At the same time, the legal provisions concerning relevant occupations or positions and those concerning household registration, school roll and personnel files should be modified and it should be stipulated that the minors whose criminal records have been sealed shall be treated equally in job hunting and admission to a school. Secondly, the system of sealing minors’ criminal records should introduce the idea of restorative justice, which mainly includes establishing the victim-offender reconciliation system and publicizing the restorative ideas such as “forgiveness, regression and equality”. Finally, judicial organs can attempt to implement the system of expunging minors’ criminal records. They can wipe out the sealed criminal information of minors by deleting their personal information and destroying the relevant legal documents.