Research On Lowering The Age Of Criminal Responsibility In China

Intelligence youths lead to a wisdom nation;rich youths lead to a rich nation;strong youths lead to a strong nation.Juveniles are the future of our country.As the trend of juvenile delinquency is becoming increasingly serious,whether to reduce the age of criminal responsibility in China has been discussed in succession and being put on people’s agenda.The emergence and development of the age system of criminal responsibility are closely related to social life,because factors such as the speed of social and economic development,the policy environment,the level of civilization,human mental and physical intelligence are needed to be consideredindetermining the age of criminal responsibility.The law reflects imprints of different era,which permeate the current social development situation.Law is always updated and perfected with the social development to meet the needs of social development.Although our country revised the scope of criminal law relative to the age of criminal responsibility in 1997,The age group division for criminal responsibility in our country still adopted the provisions of 1979 Criminal Law,and it has gone through 40 years till now.Now in the face of the repeated and intensified younger age crime,the relevant legislative provisions are not fit into the reality.Based on this,it is necessary to reduce the age of criminal responsibility in China to meet the needs of the actual judicature,which requires the rational thinking of the vast majority of legislation and judicial workers.This article makes a study on reducing the age of criminal responsibility from the perspective of determining the age and factors of our country’s criminal responsibility.This article is divided into three parts.The first part gives a brief account of the general principles of determining the age of criminal responsibility,and analyzes the factors that need to be referred.The second part,analyzes the current situation and existing problems of our legislation by statistical and empirical methods,and explains the necessity and feasibility of reducing the age of criminal responsibility.At the same time,we should learn from the advanced experience of foreign legislation,absorbing the experience of reducing the age of civil act in Civil Law,and consulting the provision of reducing the age of administrative responsibility in the revised draft of Public Security Management Punishment Law.The third part puts forward the pertinent legislative proposals of reducing the age of criminal responsibility,and puts forward the relevant judicial work suggestions.The author suggests that the age for full omission of criminal responsibilities should be lowered to 12 years old,the age of limited criminal responsibility should be lowered to 12 years old to 16 years old,and the age of full criminal responsibility should be maintained at 16 years old.To reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 12 to 18 years of age.In order to eliminate the impact of lowering the age of criminal responsibility,relevant improvement should be made to the system of community correction,elimination of criminal record and work-study schools.In this way we can lower the effect caused by reducing the age of criminal responsibility system,and promote the matching and interaction between the lowered age of criminal responsibility and non-penal measures.