Research On The Issue And Imporvement Of Our Country’s Short-term Freedom Penalty

The short-term freedom penalty has begun to attract attention since the firstLondon international conference of prison in1872, a number of issues related toshort-term freedom penalty including its significance, malpractice, alternativemeasures and so on have become an important research topic. Now the mainstreamview is that short-term freedom penalty has many drawbacks, but it can not berepealed. Various countries have taken a series of measures to reform and improve itto avoid the adverse effects it will bring. In our country the short-term freedompenalty is a provision which is formulated a lot in criminal legislation and isemployed very frequently, besides there are many problems in our short-termfreedom penalty system, and therefore we have an urgent need for improvement. Ourshort-term freedom penalty reform started late, now it’s far behind the westerncountries, so we should absorb more of their successful experience to accelerate thedevelopment process of China’s short-term freedom penalty.Light punishment is the most distinctive features of the development process ofthe punishment, but also a big trend of the world criminal reform. Socializedexecution can well avoid the cross-infection and the resocialization difficulties thatthe sentence of imprisonment brought. It’s also in line with the execution ofeconomic and humanitarian ideas, so the world is favored a plus with it. Ourimprovement of short-term freedom penalty should take light punishment andsocialized execution as ideas to start.In the study of the historical development of the short-term free penalty, theconcept of which were defined, and then through analyzing the positive and negativeaspects of short-term freedom penalty as well as different academic views on it,finally I proposed the right attitude to treat short-term free penalty and the solution toimprove it.The short-term freedom penalty experienced the developing process fromancient infancy and modern prosperity to contemporary controversies and reform. The short-term freedom penalty was highly respected in the early stage, butgradually it began to be questioned, so that someone proposed to repeal it, andfinally the mainstream view is that in spite of the existence of a number ofshortcomings, the value can not be ignored and should be retained and reformed. Theconcept of short-term freedom penalty in the world is not conclusive. To define theconcept of short-term freedom penalty we should start from "freedom","short-term",and "penalty". After careful analysis I think our country’s short-term freedompenalty should be defined as detention punishment and imprisonment three yearsbelow.There are three viewpoints of short-term freedom penalty’s abolition, namelynegation, affirmation and eclecticism. Eclecticism is the mainstream point of viewwith which I also agree. Our short-term freedom penalty can not be abolished at thisstage, but it should limit its application. Many problems existed in our currentshort-term free penalty, mainly in the following areas: special prevention and generalprevention function weakening; the lack of strict regulatory classification system; thetransformation means of our short-term prison were unscientific; labeling effect.Another problem facing sentence of imprisonment, such as adversely affected by theprison subculture and the conflict between traditional prison management and theresocialization goals.As long as there is a problem we have to find ways to solve it. In view of theproblems of our country’s short-term freedom penalty, we should learn from theadvanced outcome of countries in the reforms of short-term freedom penalty, we cantry from the following four perspectives to improve it. Specifically: first of all,finding alternatives to short-term freedom penalty, such as fines, qualificationspunishment and community service; secondly, improving the system of criminalhesitation, mainly based on micro-crime punishment system, declaring hesitatesystem, improving the system of prosecution hesitation and probation system; thirdly,reforming the traditional implementation of short-term freedom penalty, introducethe implementation of weekend imprisonment, half in prison and amateurimprisonment; lastly, we should establish crime record elimination of short-termfreedom penalty to eliminate labeling effect of short-term freedom penalty.