Village Officials’ Job-related Crimes Research

With rapid development of market economy, the urbanization of Chinese rural areas is constantly growing in recent years. Meanwhile, a large number of government and social capital flows to the countryside. The village officials’ power is getting larger. At the same time, their job-related crimes are getting more and more under the weak supervision.General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed that we should fight against both “tigers” and “flies” on the conference of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. The village officials’ duty behavior is directly related with production and life of rural residents. It also directly affects incomes and living improvement of rural residents. The village officials are similar to the “flies” according to their authority level. However, the corruption harmfulness of the “flies” is more direct and obvious compared with the “tigers”. Currently, it is quite necessary to strengthen the research on village officials’ job-related crimes.The village officials are working staff elected by member congress of village party branch, the villager meeting, villager group or village collective economic organization, or hired by the government. They can execute public power, manage village affairs, and enjoy a certain subsidies. Village officials’ job-related crimes should be punished, which cause serious damage to duty activity management practices of village officials. There are four types of village officials according to their different producing ways: the village party branch committee members, the village committee members, the village group leader, the village collective economic organization managers and the college graduates working as village officials. There are two types of village officials’ job-related crimes according to different power sources of village officials’ duty behavior. One is job-related crimes as state officials, who assist government to execute administration. The power is from law or the government. The other is job-related crimes as village organization working staff, who conduct autonomous village affairs. The power is from village organization members.On the basis of data statistics of sixty cases of village officials’ job-related crimes which happened in Shanghai in recent five years, and combined with the data information and analysis reports about the village officials’ job-related crimes which happened in the rest regions of the country, we can come to the conclusion that village officials’ job-related crimes have eight characteristics or rules: “the crimes have been on the rise ”, “ most of the crimes occur in the urbanization process”, “village officials who commit job-related crimes are older and their educational levels are lower”, “ most of them are leaders of the village committee and village party branch”, “a large number of crimes are joint crimes”, “the crimes mainly occur in the field of engineering and land acquisition”, “the amount involved is huge”, and “the punishment is milder”.Based on the Utility Punishment Theory of Bentham and the Materialistic Dialectics Theory, we can acknowledge that the causes of village officials’ job-related crimes mainly lie in that the "happiness" of committing crimes is easily to pursue, the “pain” may be avoided, and the village officials are lack of self-regulation ability. In other words, undemocratic affairs governance and unregulated financial management create opportunities for village officials’ job-related crimes; imperfect publication mechanism and deficient supervision mechanism reduce the risk of committing crimes; and the lack of village officials’ self-regulation ability resulting from their cognitive bias with themselves, the village official position as well as the society, is the internal cause, which prompt the village officials to commit job-related crimes.Although village officials aren’t national civil servants, they should also not abuse the power authorized by the government or entrusted by the villagers, especially cannot abuse the power to commit job-related crimes. We must take a series of countermeasures to fight against the village officials’ job-related crimes, which mainly include three aspects. Firstly, regulate the personnel selection system, strengthen democratic governance and complete the financial management system to make the village officials unable to abuse their power. Secondly, activate the publication mechanism of village affairs and reinforce the supervision mechanism to make the village officials afraid to abuse their power. Thirdly, strengthen the money and values education, moralities and laws education, exemplary education and warning education to enhance village officials’ self-regulation ability, which make the village officials unwilling to abuse their power.