Research On The Improvement Of Judicial Confirmation System Of Minor’s Age For Criminal Responsibility

In recent years, with the rapid development of economy and technology,juveniles who do crimes are getting more and more, especially that juveniles at younger age are more and more involved into crimes, which is witnessing a tendency of worse development. Such a situation adversely harms the social stability. For all the criminal laws in China, the regulations related to the age of juveniles who should undertake criminal liabilities are too rigid and old, which are unable to adapt to the great changes of juveniles’ crimes today. During the juridical practice, it was difficult to define the real ages of the juvenile suspects because they do not have household registration, their dates of birth are mistaken or their resident certifications are faked etc. If the juveniles’ age can only be defined within a range which is at the threshold of liability-undertaking, like from 13 to 15 years old, the juveniles, pursuant to current laws and rules, do not need to undertake the criminal liabilities because they are not aged. Under this background, some juveniles, who did crimes, are free from criminal liabilities because their ages are not able to be defined. In this case, the juveniles will continue to do crimes because they think that even though they have crimes, they do not have to take any criminal responsibilities. Besides, judicial application related to juveniles’ criminal liabilities are difficult to be carried out because of the unclear aging system. Therefore, it is mandatory to perfect the system of age defining for juveniles’ criminal liabilities and clearly confirm the standards of age defining. Only in this way can the fairness of judicature be realized.In order to study how to perfect the system of age defining for juveniles’ criminal liabilities, it is necessary to know about the close relationship between juveniles’ age and criminal liabilities. Somewhat, we can say that the age of juvenile suspects determines that whether the juveniles need to undertake criminal liabilities,as well as that what kind of liability shall the juvenile undertake if he or she needs to.Because that age for undertaking criminal liabilities is rather close to the criminal liabilities, we should carefully work on the system to define age for juveniles to undertake criminal liabilities.According to the laws and rules in China, documents which are able to prove the age of juveniles’ age include household register certificate, birth certificate, proof of student status and presentation given by witnesses. For household register certificate,it is required that the certificate shall be issued according to the requirements and procedures requested by the government, which is standardized and regulated. Thus,household register certificate is more valuable and persuasive than other documents.However, during judicial practice, there are still some situations that the age of juvenile suspect is difficult to define because the information(related to household register) collection is not timely updated, solar calendar and lunar calendar are not clearly distinguished or household information is faked. Under this background, in order to get the punishment and protection of criminal laws work, it is necessary to perfect the system to define the age for juveniles to undertake criminal liabilities.In order to get the standards for defining the age for juveniles to undertake criminal liabilities done, it is mandatory to clearly know that the social maturity is the foundation of aging system of juveniles’ criminal liability. That is physical age is not the only foundation. If the juvenile suspect’s age is not able to be finally defined by household register certificate and other presentation documents, bone age identification and mental age test can be turned for help. In addition, the judges have the right to define juveniles’ ages, who should take into account of the crime fighting and human rights assurance when defining the age. Anyway, only the system to define juveniles’ age for undertaking criminal liabilities is perfected can the doubts on principle of for the defendant and social feelings be better balanced.