Research On Juvenile Social Survey System

Gradually emerging with the continuous development of civilization of socialistrules of law of China, juvenile social survey system is a criminal litigation systemaiming to protect the human rights of juvenile offenders. The preconditions of itsappearing include that the judicial concept was reformed, human rights theory wasdeeply developed and public society paid attentions to the constant emerging ofjuvenile crimes. Article268of “Code of Criminal Procedure” also clearly stipulatesthat the public security organs, the people’s procuratorates and the people’s courts caninvestigate the circumstances of the growing experience, criminal reasons, correctingconditions and others of the juvenile criminal suspects or the defendants whenhandling juvenile criminal cases. However, these provisions only provide theprinciples and there are no specific provisions about the natures of the subjects,procedures, contents, methods and reports of the juvenile offender social survey in thecriminal proceedings, which can lead to different practices among different judiciarydepartments. It is not conducive to protect the legitimate interest of juveniles.For the subject of social survey, in the judicial practices all over China, all publicsecurity organs, procuratorial organs, judicial organs, judicial and administrativeorgans and authorities have right to carry out social surveys. The uncertainty ofsurvey subject leads to the phenomenon that the survey subjects mutually makeexcuses, leaving the social survey stay in form. So the author thinks that the judicialorgans should take the lead, the courts outsource or entrust the tasks of social surveyreport to a third party public platform which has professional qualifications. Then thethird party public platform selects qualified legal volunteers to organize investigationteams and serve as the subjects of the social surveys.As for the survey procedures, the start of social survey program has no clearcriteria, which results in confusions between starters and actual investigators, leadingto the situations that the survey is inefficient, the surveyors mutually make excuse andthere is no one in charge. The methods of social survey are not determinate, makingthe social survey reports unreliable. There are not detailed provisions about the rights and obligations of the social surveyors. In judicial practices, the qualities of surveyorsare uneven, which greatly influences judicial fairness and destroys legal authority.The forms of social survey report are not clearly specified. Different places havedifferent forms, not forming unified standards, which makes a great discount onpublic image, greatly reducing their scientific authority. Also, the social surveysystem lacks effective external oversight powers and control mechanisms. So inactual social survey process, some surveyors take the reasons as results, hear throughthe grapevines and muddle through their work, partly attributing the criminal reasonsof juveniles to the adverse effects of the social environment. Some surveyors evendeliberately bend the law for their own profits and believe one-side stories. Moreserious, some surveyors may produce false evidences and false data, accept briberiesof the juvenile offenders or the victims, promote their private interests under the guiseof serving the public and others. All these actions make the social survey ineffectiveand stay in form. Therefore, the author believes that it is necessary to establish ascientific and strict supervision mechanism to supervise and review the social surveyprogram, the social surveyors and the social survey reports so as to ensure theauthenticity, accuracy, scientific and neutrality of the social survey report.As for survey contents, the current social survey lacks of uniform standards,specifically lacks of clear survey indicators, resulting in the situation that subjectivefeelings account for a big proportion of the report, which may confuse the realcriminal motivations of the juvenile offenders with the surface reasons of theirobjective conditions and others. Also, it lacks of personality measure of criminalpsychology. In practice, relevant organs generally and simply analyze the criminalreasons, criminal motivations, personality characteristics, family environment and soon, but ignore the criminal reasons of the offenders with imperfect personalities andextremely distorted minds. Then the offenders are likely to commit crimes again infuture time, which is not conducive to prevent and combat crimes as well as treat,correct and education juvenile offenders with unsound personalities. Besides, socialsurvey blindly light punishments. Started late, the current social survey system is notmature enough. As a new thing and a new system, it has received much attentions ofthe public. During the surveys, surveyors are susceptible to public opinions. At present, the public and public opinions tend to hold relative tolerant attitudes tojuvenile offenders. This will make the social survey report deviate from the truelegislative intentions of the system. Therefore, the author suggests determiningqualitative and quantitative survey indicators, establishing personality assessmentmechanism of criminal psychology, specifying surveyors and providing pre-servicetrainings to avoid indiscriminately showing understanding and sympathy for juvenileoffenders without any analysis.As for property of social survey report, legislation does not make clearstipulations about the legal property of the survey report. Also, there are differentcontroversies in theories. Some scholars think that survey reports are importantreferences, but some scholars believe that they have evidence properties. Scholars,thinking that social survey reports are evidences, divide social survey reports into twokinds of documentary evidence and character evidence. The different views about thesocial attributes of the survey reports will make the justice organizations makedifferent decisions. This will result in different consequences for the same crimes.Therefore, the author thinks it is necessary to determine the property of social surveyreport. Besides, the author thinks that social survey report belongs to evidence andshould be classified as character evidence.