Study On The Development And Improvement Of The System Of Community-based Corrections In China

Nowadays, all the nations are, from every aspect, seeking for the developmentand prosperity, while penalty, as an important way to check crimes and maintainsocial security, has become the focus of them. With a deeper understanding of thefunction and the purpose of penalties,the governments all over the world keep tryingtheir best to punish the crimes and criminals in the most humane, civilized andeffective way to publicize and socialize the enforcement of punishments in the penalsystem reform and innovation.Community-based corrections fully express such kindof executing concept, which is an executing system experiencing explorations andtrials, tests and modifications of western countries. In the1970s and80s, it hasbecome a system and a method to correct crimes based on communities, which ispopular among western developed countries and advocated by the U.N CrimePrevention and Control Organization. The enforcing degrees of the community-basedcorrections have become the important sign to measure a country’s civilization.In2003, the first pilot has been established. In2011,9years later, this system hasbeen written in the Eighth Criminal Amendment. During these nine years, thecommunity-based corrections in China, borrowing from the more mature experienceof the western countries，has finished its first trial. During the development over tenyears, Chinese community-based corrections has formed its own system andcharacteristics, though compared with the western countries, ours is still in its earlystage, and is also weak in the theory and practice. In the judicial practice, there are alot of difficulties, problems and challenges, and there still exist many places forimprovement. But as an explorative research, this paper, focusing on the existingproblems in the community-based corrections, through the method of comparison andcomprehensive analysis, summarizes the system per se, discovers the problems andshortcomings in it, and puts forward the envisages and suggestions to improve andreform it. Specifically, the body of this paper, besides introduction and conclusion, can be divided into three parts:The first part is a summary of the community-based corrections. It first comparesthe different definitions of this system at home and abroad, i.e. its broad sense and itsnarrow sense, and supports the opinion of the narrow sense—it is a non-custodypenalty enforcement activity. Based on this concept, the paper analyses the mainfeatures of community-based corrections, which are non-custody, social work,mitigation and certain scope of application. Then, it expounds the theoreticalbackground of its origin and development, such as a humanitarian, executionsocialization theory, and strengthens the theoretical basis of its existence. Next, thepaper introduces its development since2003when the first pilot was established, andagrees to the positive significance in such aspects as it can lower the re-crime rate andpromote the social harmony and maintain the social security. At last, itcomprehensively analyses the comparatively mature community-based correctionsystem abroad from the following aspects, legislation, kinds of measures, decision andenforcement.The second part analyses objectively the existing problems and their reasons inthe community-based correction in China at the present stage, which are theimperfection of the legal system, the backwardness of the staff construction, the poorcoordination of various departments, the insufficiency of the outlay, and the lack ofidentification in the opinions etc.The third part, through the above analysis,combining the overseas advancedexperience and some nice trials In the past ten years in some parts of our country, theauthor puts forward the suggestions from the various angles such as promotinglegislation, improving systems, strengthening publicity etc. to perfect thecommunity-based corrections in our country.The popularization of the community-based corrections is very important toconstruct a harmonious socialist society. The main reasons China can adopt thesystem of community-based corrections are as follows: one is a better theoreticalfoundation concept,"the rehabilitation of criminals as new" is the basic goal of the thereform of criminals in China.It Is consistent with the goal of community-based corrections; the second is a certain system foundation in the criminal law of ourcountry, such as there is a definite provisions on parole, probation; the third is with thedevelopment process of Chinese society, there are some urgent problems, such asprison criminals number increasing continuously, the high cost of prison execution inprison criminals, the poor effect of the criminals reform, these defects can becompensated for by community-based corrections to a certain extent.The community-based corrections in China combining Chinese realities, hasestablished the system, strengthened its function, developed the organizations andpersonnel, raised the social participation, and produced great supervision, educationand assistance effect. From reformation to correction, from prison to community, fromcriminals to community-based corrections personnel, a series of changes reflect thetransition of the penal concept from “the penalty basis” to “the human basis”, and thelegal pattern from “control” to “security and service”.The community-basedcorrections in China will be pushed to new heights.