| In recent years,juvenile delinquency has become increasingly young,concentrated,repeated and violent.The case of a 13-year-old boy killing a 10-year-old girl in Dalian in 2019 has pushed the call for revising the age of criminal responsibility law to the forefront.In order to curb the trend of juvenile delinquency,comfort the feelings of victims and their families,and better reform young juveniles involved in crimes,the National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee passed the Amendment(11)to the Criminal Law on December 26,2020,which lowered the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 12 years of age.The amendment of the minimum age of criminal responsibility reflects the progress of the judicial reform in response to the public sentiment.However,the problems of judicial application in the judicial practice of the new law still need to be studied and solved.Among them,it is of great value to make a rational comment on the revised minimum age regulation of criminal responsibility,and to analyze and study the possible problems of judicial application in some cases,so as to better solve the problem of juvenile delinquency.The conventional minimum age of criminal responsibility in China is 14 years old.After the legislative amendment of the age of criminal responsibility,the minimum age of criminal responsibility for young juveniles who commit intentional homicide or intentional injury will be lowered to 12 years old conditionally.For the existing ways to solve the age defect of criminal responsibility,the academic circle has summarized three ways to solve the problems related to the revision of the minimum age of criminal responsibility according to the mature institutional experience at home and abroad.First,the universal path of reducing the age of criminal responsibility,which originated from Japan.Japan has realized that the original regulation of the age of criminal responsibility has been inconsistent with the criminal responsibility capacity of minors due to the incident of drunken-Rosa Sato in 1997 and the Sasebo incident in 2000.Therefore,Japan generally lowered the age of criminal responsibility in the Juvenile Law in 2007,lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 11 years old.Second,the "malicious supplementary age" rule path,which originated in Britain.In the path of "malicious compensatory age",the lower limit of the age of criminal responsibility is related to the degree of criminal malice.The greater the degree of criminal malice,the lower minimum age of criminal responsibility will be correspondingly reduced.Third,the path of "individual downgrades",which originated in China.Combining with the common type cut criminal responsibility age path and the advantage of "malicious complement age" rule path,formed a unique system of criminal responsibility age,maintain the dignity of the criminal law and punishment of the real young crime minors.In order to effectively curb the frequent occurrence of juvenile crimes and protect the healthy growth of minors,relevant supporting measures should be constructed while applying the path of "individual reduction" : Publish relevant legislation of criminal responsibility to modify the judicial interpretation issued guidance,case to determine the articles about the standard of "if",draw lessons from "malicious complement age" rules in the path of malicious recognized methods,to improve the procedures of approval of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and perfect the system of minors special rectification measures.Only in this way can we ensure that minors will not be discriminated against by the society after being punished or released after serving their sentence,and will be able to reintegrate into the society smoothly. |
