Study On The Right Of Communication With Family Members And Friends Of Criminal Suspects In Custody

Except preface and epilogue,this article is divided into three parts.The first part is the basic theory of the right of suspects in custody to communicate with family members and friends,which is that according to legal procedures and requirements,suspects in custody can communicate with family members and friends who care about the interests of suspects.The right is divided into two aspects,visitation and communication.The content of the communication generally divided into contentious matter and non-contentious matter.Compared with other rights,the right to communicate with family members and friends is bidirectional,restricted and multiple.Firstly,when it comes to the nature of the right,the right belongs to the right of correspondence freedom and the right of family private life,so it has the nature of constitutional right.Secondly,from the perspective of criminal procedure law,this right has the nature of litigation rights;Finally,whether constitutional right or litigation right,this right has the nature of basic human rights.Therefore,it is a requirement of humanism to protect the right,which also can reduce the negative influence of detention on the suspect.On the other hand,it is also one of the ways to supervise and ensure the proceeding of the lawsuit.The second part is a comparative study of the right.From the perspective of international standards,many international documents of human rights law has enacted regulations about this right.Some rules directly expounds the legal basis of the right,and there are also some international judicial criterion directly defines the rights and have designed the limits to the power,The United Nations pays more attention on young criminal suspects.The European court of Human Rights also protected the right.The European court of Human Rights usually examine judgements of member states with article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights,when a criminal suspect appeal to court because his right has been restricted.A lot of judgements of the European Court of Human Rights ensured that suspects in custody should have the right to communicate with family members and friends,and ensure principles that member states should obey when they restrict this right,which means that the limitation should be in accordance with laws,with proper purpose and with the requirement of a democratic society.From the experience of other countries,they established the principle,which is that meeting with communication is the principle,and limitation is exception.Those countries often limit the right through same ways,such as the number of visitation person,visitation time,the number of times and so on.However,based on different criminal value and different situation,countries also took different restriction measures.The third part introduces the actual state of the right,sums up the problems,analyzes the reasons,and finally puts forward some suggestions for improvement.Chinese criminal procedure law has not stipulated the right of crime suspect in custody to communicate with family members and friends,and some related rules were provided in some administrative rules and regulations as well as some judicial interpretation,and those rules are not sufficient.In practice,there are also a lot of problems in the practice of the right,because the concept,regime and practice.Based on this,it is important to pay attention to the change of concept and make the improvement of the regime.The right should be explicitly stipulated in the law,and the law should provide that how to protect and restrict the right and establish the relief procedure to improve the right.