The Crime Of Misconduct In Public Office In UK And Its Enlightenment To The Legislation Of Criminal Law In China

The common law offence of misconduct in public office was formally established by Lord Mansfield in 1873.The essence of the crime which has a wide range of behavior lies in protecting the legitimacy of public office behavior and the public’s reasonable trust in it."Conflict of interest" which includes self-trading,exerting influence,and failing to perform avoidance obligations is the main type of corruptive behavior of the crime.Different from the traditional corruption crime of power transactions,the crime of misconduct in public office focus on using personal power to seek private gains under conflict of interest.By combining with bribery,the crime has formed a "full coverage" criminal punishment system from "external transactional" to "internal transactional" in corruption;Through its concise and inclusive elements,the network of criminal law in corruption has been tightened,and the prevention function of criminal law for corruption has been strengthened;By criminalizing conflicts of interest which seriously violate administrative ethical norms,the crime has strengthened the preventive effect of the predecessor law and has constructed a "pre-punishment coordination" corruption governance model.The crime of misconduct in the United Kingdom plays an important role in the field of corruption governance,reflecting the active governance concept of that field.In contrast,China’s anti-corruption criminal legislation adopts a "responsive" legislative concept,focusing on the results of transactions between power and money or the results of power abuse,making them as the standard of criminalization,which weakened the preventive capacity of criminal law.China now is entering an era of "comprehensive anti-corruption",it is reasonable to draw on the positive governance concepts embodied in the offence of misconduct in public office and transform the traditional negative governance concepts of anti-corruption.Under the premise of conforming to China’s actual conditions,the criminalization of "conflict of interest" helps comprehensively enhance the ability of criminal law in regulating corruption.