An Empirical Study On Minors’ Violent Crime In Fuling District

Recently, there has been increasing concerns about violent crime by minors, possibly dueto the two reasons: the persons involved here is the future of the nation and the country;violent crimes are very harmful. Analysis and argument of its type, social influences and howto punish and prevent it can be seen everywhere both at home and abroad. However, peopleare seemingly misled by an inertia bias: violent crime by minors has become serious enoughto post a threat to society. Hence, this paper is trying to propose a gentle and forgiving policytowards violent crime by minors based on the immature juvenile justice system of China. Thispaper is based on the understanding of the characteristics of violent crime by minors in FulinDistrict of Chongqing, which are results from the author’s field research and analysis of crimestatistics in People’s Procuratorate of Fuling District of Chongqing. This paper serves as apreliminary study and explore on violent crime by minors in terms of the philosophy,practices and what can be improved, aiming to provide some help in preventing and reducingthe rate of violent crime by minors and improving relevant justice system theories andpractices.Aside from the Introduction and Conclusion, this paper is organized as four sections,each of which is summarized as below:The first section defines what is violent crime by minors after introducing the concept ofviolent crimes and minors, thus clarifying the research domain in this paper is statistics ofviolent crime by minors in Fulin District of Chonqing between Septemeber of2003and2011.First we introduce the general situation of violent crime by minors in filing district, thendescribe the types and name of criminal charges of violent crimes by the minors in FulingDistrict.A comparsion is then done on trend and rates of violent crime with the generalviolent crimes in the district.The second section analyzes in detail the characteristics of violent crime by the minors inFuling District. Firstly, the offenders in violent crime by the minors are mostly at age of16、17； majority of them are male; Generally with low education level; most of them are farmersor unemployed. Secondly, motives of offenders are quite diversified and varies with theparticular charges. Most of the crimes are driven by abrupt intentions rather than well plannedbeforehand. Lastly comes is the characteristics of the crimes themselves. The crimes occurmainly in Spring and Summer, and more in the night than in the day; they are found mostly in the streets, around the campus, as well as internet cafes and other places; their criminal meansare found to be simply, most of which rely on tools and physical violence; crimes arefrequently conducted by a group; crime subjects are more likely to be weaker students inschool and also single women.The third section criticizes the prevailing theories in jurists and modern society basedon data analysis above. In the first place it brings up those common over-exaggerated views,such as the misconception of lower ages of offenders in violent crimes by minors; belief of atrend of serious deterioration of violent crimes by minors are against the consistently gentlechanges reflected in data; fear of violent crimes by minors to be beyond controllable is alsonot valid since the motives of this type of crime are controllable. After that, this sectionacknowledged and pointed out the defects of theories about minors in current jurisprudence inChina, Specifically speaking, the defects include national concept of parental authority, thepenalty decided individually, teenagers should be taught not penalized, all of which lead to thewhole society‘s incorrect understanding of violent crime by minors. Lastly, the authorborrow the concept of “practicing licesne period” mentioned by American jurist FranklinE.Zimring in the book <American Juvenile Justice> to point out that violent crime by minorsis a normal and inevitable phenomenal in the growth of minors, is a price that must be paidfor society evolution. Then the author describe a series of analysis in the book about thefailure in predicting a “blood-thirsty era” of juvenile violence by analysts in last century,calling for a peaceful treatment of violent crime by minors and propose a soft policy.Following the critiques and constructions in the third section, the fourth section proposesreform on current policy. Firstly, it suggests a soft method, including alleviating measures andfocuses on long-term effectiveness of prevention. Alleviating measures are discussed fromthree aspects: decriminalization, de-penalization, non-custodial sentences. The authoraffirmed the progress made in current judicial system and pointed out the inadequacy andsuggested measure to reform based on analysis of data retrieved from Fuling DistrictProcuratorate. Decriminalization advocates the implementation of the " double slow", that is,the police suspending filing a case and the prosecutors deferring prosecution; thede-penalization uphold the co-existence of criminal corrective measures and non-criminalcorrective measures, in which the non-criminal corrective measures should establish anadditional supervision system and community service system in order to help socialization ofjuvenile offenders; non-custodial sentences firstly emphasize the hazards of imprisonment, as well as the advantages of non-custodial sentences, including issuing arrest warrant as little aspossible for minors, court suspend sentences and praised the non-custodial sentence.Toemphasize on long-term effects of prevention, the author argues from generalized and narrowangle that before-hand crime prevention should be adopted on violent crimes by minors. Theauthor then proposes reform on current criminal countermeasures. Current criminal law doesnot make difference between minors and adults, thus not appropriate for minors; Code ofCriminal Procedure provide the special procedures for minors, but it is too fragmented. Thusthe author suggest learning from those countries that have mature juvenile justice researchwhen establishing special laws for juvenile. Finally, the author discusses counter-measuresfrom society and its reforms, and has elaborated different requirement and proposals forreform from three aspects: family, school and society. At family level, it is suggested tostrengthen education on parents and improve the qualities of the parents; At school level, thereform is to strengthen school education and management, and to improve teacher qualities;At society level, creating a good community and cultural environment is proposed.