| With the development of restorative justice in our country, criminal reconciliation, as a new solution to criminal disputes and a legal part in the legislation process, is gaining more and more attention of the criminal theory field and practice field. Undeniably, while settling disputes and repairing community relations, criminal reconciliation also influences the criminal’s actual criminal responsibility to a certain extent. From this prospective, this thesis elaborates issues such as whether criminal reconciliation influences criminal responsibility, whether the influence is legitimate, and how to influence, and then proposes suggestions to the legalisation of criminal reconciliation’s influence on criminal responsibility.Apart from introduction and conclusion, the thesis is divided into five parts.The first part, introduces the notions and explanations related to criminal reconciliation and criminal responsibility. Because of the criminal attributes, contract attributes and repair attributes, criminal reconciliation is a unique way for the two counterparts to discuss and settle disputes on a equal level. Criminal responsibility is a negative legal assessment with the premises of the criminal law and criminal facts and with the consequences of substantive penalties. At the same time, through the evaluation on the criminal responsibility’s imputation of behavior and the criminal, and the comprehensive judgment of social harmfulness and personal danger of the criminal, criminal responsibility provides the legal basis for reasonable discretion of sanctions on criminals.The second part, mainly discussed the influence of criminal reconciliation on the criminal responsibility and its legitimacy. This part points out criminal reconciliation is just a influential factor, not a decisive one. Its specific impact of criminal responsibility is reflected in the determination of criminal responsibility and implementation. Based on the reduction of personal danger, and a variety of criminal plots, criminal reconciliation’s compound attribute determines its legitimacy of criminal responsibility. And from the point of modern purpose theory of penalties, criminal reconciliation’s influence on criminal responsibility is a necessity in penalty prevention and corrections.The third part, illustrates the current situation of criminal reconciliation in our country and sums up its improper influence on criminal responsibility. The existing criminal reconciliation reveals several problems: the usage of penalties is arbitrary; the criterion for penalties is not standard; compensation factors are too influential to criminal responsibility and the applicable fields and ways of case settlement is contrary to laws and regulations.The fourth part, analyzes the reasons why criminal reconciliation has improper influence on criminal responsibility. On the legislative level, the vacancy of substantive law of criminal reconciliation leads to the insufficiency of law basis in the influence of criminal responsibility. The "leniency" stipulated in the criminal procedure law indicates the ambiguity in the practice of sentencing, and the contradiction between judicial interpretation and legislation makes judicial practitioners disoriented when dealing with specific cases. On the judicial level, lacking of reasonable rules and procedures, ‘leniency’ faces the question that criminal reconciliation is ‘to spend money for penalty’; besides, the imperfection of infrastructures of criminal reconciliation leads the lack of protection of its influences on criminal responsibility; on the other hand, the justice and credibility is under threat as well.The fifth part, puts forward suggestions to the realization of criminal reconciliation’s legitimate influence on criminal responsibility in four aspects. First, the criminal reconciliation should be put into substantive law in legal sentencing. Article sixty-nine can be added into the "criminal law" after the sixty-eighth article: "criminals, who get the criminal reconciliation and forgiveness with the victims, can be given a lighter or mitigated penalty. When crime is relatively minor, criminals can be exempted from penalties." In this way criminal reconciliation can be identified and protected in the substantive laws, which makes up for the defects of procedural law notion ambiguity. Second, sentencing of criminal reconciliation should be standardized to uniform the differentiation of penalties and avoid improper sentencing differences. Third, in the practice of ‘leniency’, both ‘quality’ and ‘quantity’ should be taken into account, to avoid the amount of fines becoming the mono factor in penalties. Besides, the ability to compensate and the initial to compensate of criminals are also crucial. Fourth, the infrastructures of criminal reconciliation should be perfected from the perspective of its legitimate influence on criminal responsibility. What’s more, the investigation systems of legitimacy and voluntary comprise should be set up and supervision systems of criminals before the lawsuits and after the sentencing should be explored further as well. |
