A Study On Difficult Issues Relating To Status Offense

In the Criminal Law, status not only reflects a certain social relations, but also bears a specific connotation. Since it is one of the important factors that have impact on conviction and sentence and is also closely related to the realization of the function of the State and the protection of the human rights of its citizens, there has always been a great debate about it in Sino-foreign criminal law circles. Status offense remains to be an old yet refreshing topic in the research of the theory of Criminal Law. The reason we say it is old is because the legislation regarding status offense can be traced back to Xia dynasty in China. The reason we described it as refreshing is because status offense not only exists in the criminal legislation of both China and other foreign countries, be it today or in ancient times, but also tends to increase with the development of the society. Status offense is an important constituent in the country's criminal law system. In the Criminal Laws of the countries of the world, though various characteristics are found in their definition of the concept of status, still no unified viewpoint or cognition has been formed on it. Under normal circumstance, it allows us to convict a status offense regardless of whether or not the criminal suspect has a special status or how much influence its status has brought on criminal responsibility. However, in current criminal law system, no specific and detailed legal concept with respect to status offense has been put forward so far and there is no unified standard in convicting a status offense. Therefore, from the perspective of the comparative law, this paper has carried out a comprehensive and systematic study and analysis on such concept as the status offense so as to further specify the legal meanings of status offense, thereby perfecting its purpose of serving for the judicial practice.This paper can be divided into four parts, the content of which are the followings:The first part mainly studies the connotation of status offense. In particular, it starts from discussing the concept of status offense, thus to have deep understanding of the characteristics and types of such crime. Based on those aspects, it has discussed the theoretical connotation and actual classification of status offense, which has laid a corresponding theoretical basis for subsequent study. Since relatively great debate exists in Sino-foreign theoretical circles for Criminal Law, upon combing through relevant knowledge on status offense, the writer has conducted sufficient investigation on existing literature reviews on status offense, and after sorting out the result of such investigation, the writer has analyzed the issues in relation to the definition of status offense by both the law circles and judicial circles in China. Currently, in terms of the specific definition of status offense by both the law circles and judicial circles in China, there are two representative viewpoints, one is that it is a criminal offense constituted by a special status, which is that the status offense is a criminal offense in opposition to general offense, more specifically, it is a criminal offense where the special status of a criminal or its relations are either considered as key elements to constitute a crime or have certain impact on the specific sentence; the other one is that status offense belongs to a special type of crime, which has two differentiated standard in its definition – one is that the special status of a criminal has constituted a necessary condition by law for the accused crime to be established; the other one is that the special status of the criminal has constituted a precondition for it to become the subject of the accused crime or has become an important basis for sentencing. In the study and analysis of this paper, the writer is more inclined to follow the second viewpoint in defining the status offense because it is hard to have complete coverage of all meanings of a status offense if we define status offense as one kind of crime, and consequently regard its actor as a special criminal. Though the second definition is more scientific and reasonable, it also needs to be improved. The detailed meaning of status offense can be comprehended as it is a special offense stipulated by the Criminal Law where the special status of the actor has constituted a precondition for the accused crime to be established or the basis for sentencing.In the second part, to better study relevant issues relating to status offense in the country's Criminal Law, thus to find defects of relevant provisions on status offense in the law, the writer has studied relevant foreign laws on status offense, during which relatively representative laws and regulations from Japan, Germany and Italia on status offense have been taken as examples for discussion, including a brief review of those country's status offense related institutions. By analyzing relevant laws of Germany, Japan and Italia on status offense, we can find that all those three countries have set forth legal regulation and definition for status offense in addition to a systematic stipulation on status offense from two aspects, namely pure status crime and impure status crime. Those three countries also have different stipulations on specific forms of status crime, for they all stipulate the status offense specifically in combination of the social conditions of those countries. From the writer's perspective, this paper has discussed both advantages and disadvantages of the relevant provisions from those countries on status offense, from which we should know that there are also some defects in the foreign provisions on status offense, i.e. rare provision on voluntary surrender, or say basically this have not been covered, which has greatly reduced the applicability of the law and more often brings difficulties to the handling of many cases. Secondly, provisions on some individual crimes are not all the same. China should make specific analysis on specific circumstances in its legislation process. Therefore, the writer hopes to bring certain enlightenment on further perfection of the laws and regulations on status offense in China by such comparative discussion.In the third part, in the process of writing this paper, the writer has conducted a systematic research on the country's Criminal Law. Using the legal knowledge learnt, the writer has discussed in greater detail from 3 aspects on the difficult issues relating to status offense, which is firstly, unit crime involving status offense; secondly, joint offense involving status offense; thirdly, status offense, voluntary surrender and limitation of actions. Through the research of those three major issues, the writer hopes to find major issues relating to status offense in the country and to bring certain enlightenment on the perfection of our legal system.In the fourth part, on the basis of foregoing discussion, the writer has put forward some suggestions and measures against the legislation on status offense by drawing on the relevant foreign legislations on status offense while in combination of the legal knowledge learnt previously. The writer hopes that those suggestions and measures can bring certain references to the perfection of our legislation on status offense. Additionally, the writer has proposed the development path for status offence in China on the basis of legislation perfection, in this way, this paper has not only pointed out the direction for the perfection of our legislation on status offense in the future, but has also improved the practical value of this paper.Due to limited time and professional skills, though tried but it is hard to avoid omissions in the process of writing this paper, therefore I wish to be criticized and corrected by teachers here. Some viewpoints and issues raised in this paper may have certain defects, for which in-depth studies will be carried out by the writer in future researches and works.