Research On The Definition Standard Of Public Places In Pickpocketing

Article 39 of the Criminal Law Amendment(VIII)stipulates: “Article 264 of the Criminal Law shall be amended to read: …Whoever steals public or private property with a large amount,or...picks pockets shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years....The article officially defined the word“pickpocketing” as a term of criminal law.Since then,scholars have launched a lot of discussions on the specific meaning of “pickpocketing” and whether the crime of pickpocketing must occur in public places.In 2013,the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate jointly issued Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases of Theft to make law,the judicial interpretation made legal provisions on the specific meaning of“pickpocketing”,and clearly put forward that the public place is the location element of the crime of pickpocketing,and the debate over whether the specific meaning of the crime of pickpocketing includes the public place has been settled.According to the judicial interpretation,judgment in the public place is the key to conviction of pickpocketing.However,this judicial interpretation has made a vague definition of pickpocketing and has not made specific provisions on how to identify public places.There is no relevant legal provisions to make a reasonable explanation for public places in pickpocketing.At the same time,although the academic circles have explored the meaning of public places in pickpocketing,they have not reached a consensus,so the judicial definition standard of public places in pickpocketing has a great controversy.In order to explore the definition standard of public places in pickpocketing,this paper takes judicial cases as samples to study public places of pickpocketing.The article is divided into five parts: The first part,introduction.The research background,research status,research ideas and research methods are briefly described.The second part,the problems of the judicial identification of public places in pickpocketing.The basic information of the crime place was summarized by statistical data of sample cases,and three problems were put forward by analyzing the sample data: t he court's description of the crime place was unclear,the objective determination standard was lacking,and the judgment results of the private rooms were different.The third part,the problems of the theoretical study of public places in pickpocketing.Starting from the theory,combining with the case analysis of the particularity of public places in pickpocketing,this paper puts forward two problems: it is not distinguished from public places of other crimes,and the theory is difficult to guide the j udicial practice accurately.The fourth part,the specific standards of public places in pickpocketing.The attribute of the place should be judged concretely according to space standard,personnel standard and time standard.The fifth part is the conclusion.Summarize the whole paper and put forward the shortcomings of this paper.