On Identifying Concrete Potential Damage In Criminal Law

In criminal law,concrete potential damage is defined as a target-clear,severe and urgent state formed while a danger is changing into an actual damage result,consisting of dangers caused by concrete potential damage offences and those by attempted offence.Concrete potential damage has five features:First,objectivity,since any concrete potential damage is objective.Second,normalization,as value assessment is a must when making a judgement on the concrete potential damage.Third,the seriousness of dangers,as dangers come from a realization process in which the concrete potential damage is a reality of the potential damage,and it's also result danger,basically,it is a dangerous state-the most serious one.Fourth,the definiteness of targets,the concrete potential damage will finally ensure the possible victim in its development.Fifth,the urgency from the actual damage result,as the concrete potential damage goes actual at any moment.Five theories,including pure subjectivism,subjective potential damage theory,objective potential damage theory,new objective potential damage theory and adapted objective potential damage theory are commonly used to judge concrete potential damage.Each theory has its advantages and disadvantages and all are presented from the following three aspects:criterion for judgement,time of judgement and the object of judgement.As to concrete potential damage,adapted objective potential damage which takes a stand on consequence without value maintaining that criminal law is both a code of conduct and a code of judgement shall be adopted.The object of judgement depends on the features of concrete potential danger,consisting of all the objective facts,actor's criminal plans and intention found out afterwards,on the basis of which some abstraction work is done for the purpose of focusing on the key points.Criterion for judgement ought to be made according to the theory of causation,and be based on the scientific law of causation and common people's cognition,with the latter confined to life and vital properties,and if the two conflict with each other,common people's cognition is preferred.In practice,adapted objective potential damage theory shall be used as a clue to help make judgements,that is to collect all the objective facts found out afterwards and do certain abstract generalizing of the case facts by making reference to the five elements:behavioral factors,time elements,space elements,other objective elements and criminal plans and intent,among which focus is on holding the behavioral,time,space elements and criminal plans and intents,moreover,an analysis shall be done according to either scientific law of causation or common people's cognition.According to the criterion of the judgement,if it is certain that the dangers in the object of judgement has a definite target and has reached a severe and urgent extent,concrete potential damage must have been caused.Otherwise,no concrete potential damage happens.