Research On Criminal Legislation For Extremist Crimes

With the enactment of Amendment(?)to the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China on 29th August,2015,it was the first time that "extremist crimes" were known by the public.Upgraded from extremism,extremist crimes not only have extreme characteristics of extremism,but also put extreme thoughts into action,do great harm to protected legal interests of the society and violate criminal law beyond the limit that extremism is only spread in fields of ideologies and cultures,so it is fairly necessary to inflict criminal punishments upon these crimes.Extremism is more or less similar to terrorism in subjects,ways and purposes,whereas they have some differences from each other in stages for realizing value targets,inclusion and crossover of concepts.Thus,their relationships may be summarized as follows.Extremism is eologically fundamental for terrorism,which is the most aggressive form of extremism.The occurrence of cases like Kunming "lst March" violent terrorist act has directly promoted China to the list of accusations against extremist crimes in the list of crimes cracked down upon by criminal law.As the most direct and powerful way for cracking down upon crimes,criminal law plays irreplaceable roles in preventing extremist crimes.At present,extremist crimes are criminally legislated by integrated legislation model in China.In other words,some accusations against extremist crimes are non-uni formly specified in the criminal code and the accessory criminal law.Compared with special foreign legislation models and other integrated legislation models in a broad sense,this legislation model not only has its own improvements,but also presents some problems such as lack of a systematic structure,unavailability of pertinent penal measures,unclear definitions,scope regulation and inadequate conjunction with administrative laws,as a result of which it is unfavorable for practical uses.In view of these problems with criminal legislation for extremist crimes,this paper intends to propose improvement suggestions from three perspectives.First of all,extremist crimes shall be specified in a separate section in special provisions of the criminal law,including a unified stimulation of accusations against extremist crimes,and this section shall be made more conjunct with the Counterterrorism Law of the People' s Republic of China.Secondly,efforts shall be made to improve the system of accusations against extremist crimes,increase some new accusations,define extremist crimes and identify regulation scope.Thirdly,to improve criminal punishments on extremist crimes,it is necessary to additionally specify special penalties such as circumstances for more severe punishments,additional property-oriented penalties and qualification-related penalties to make the criminal law more effective for preventing the crimes.Furthermore,punishments may be mitigated or avoided according to practical circumstances to encourage criminals to report and disclose extremist criminal activities,in order to thoroughly crack down upon extremist crimes.An attempt is made to improve these suggestions from multiple perspectives for the purpose of constantly improving China' s criminal legislation for extremist crimes.