| Corporate crime is the product of modern social and economic development, and the regulation of penalties to corporate crime has become a worldwide trend of legislation. The theory of corporate criminal responsibility in France has been well developed after a long and difficult period. In Chinese law, corporate crime (known as unit crime) has been established in the revised ’97’s criminal law’. But for the relationship between unit crime and corporate crime, and for theories of unit criminal responsibility, there is still no unified concept among criminal law experts. And the legislation has not provided a detailed and comprehensive basis to the concept of unit, neither the essence of unit crime. Accordingly, the thesis, from a comparative perspective approach, has studied related issues in Sino-French criminal law, and finally put forward some suggestions to improve the essence of unit crime and criminal penalties. This thesis consists of six chapters:As the legal subject, unit(corporate) is the legal and technical premise of unit(corporate) crime and criminal responsibility. The nature of corporate is the key to constituent elements of corporate crime, theories of criminal responsibility and principles of penalty punishments.The first chapter, from the analysis of the nature of corporate, solved the pre-problem of corporate crime and criminal responsibility. Subsequently, the thesis, through the differentiation of the concept of unit and that of corporate, further clarified reasons for the application of different titles in Chinese and French penal code, as well as the rationality that the appellation of unit crime stuck, and finally proposed to retain this appellation when addressing Chinese parts.Due to the emergence, development and evolution of the concept of unit(corporate), the traditional monism criminal law system suffered no small impact. The second chapter is divided into three parts. Firstly, it introduces the forming process of unit criminal responsibility system in China and coporate criminal responsibility system in France. Secondly, it analyzes the theoretical basis of the criminal responsibility of unit (corporate) in China and France. Finally, the following conclusions are drawn:First, both China and France in the formation of criminal responsibility system have experienced a process from negation to affirmation. Second, based on the existing criminal legislation, France has formed a relatively mature theory of corporate criminal responsibility-the representative responsibility theory. According to this theory, the corporate criminal responsibility is based on the establishment of individual criminal responsibility of natural person. However, with the development of society, the situation that a specific natural person’s criminal responsibility is difficult to identify becomes more and more. Therefore, the independent responsibility theory has been developed in France. At present, the two theories coexist and are perfect for each other. At meantime, the theoretical research on unit crime in China is still lagging behind, and the existing theories about unit crime are still not divorced from the traditional theory of criminal law, which regards the personal responsibility as the core.The third chapter, from the macro and micro levels, analyses legislative models of the unit(corporate) crime in both two countries. Specifically, from a macro perspective, the legislative models of the two countries have commonness. That’s to say that both two countries have experienced a process, which made the provisions scattered in a variety of economic laws, commercial laws and other non criminal legal norms and separate criminal laws, gradually move towards the codification. While from the micro perspective, the legislative models of the two countries are different. On the whole, the French penal code has completed the reform of integration of criminal responsibility. Both crime subject and penalties have turned to dualistic legislative models. However, the crime subject in Chinese criminal law has realized a change from monism to dualism, the penalty system, which is still still clinging to penalties of natural person, has not changed.After the codification of unit(corporate) crime, the problem to solve is how to make a clear distinction between unit crime and natural person’s crime. Accordingly, the fourth chapter puts forwards specific essences of the unit(corporate) crime. Specifically, there are four aspects:the subject of crime, subjective faults, behaviors, and the scope of unit crime. On this issue, there are links and differences between Chinese and French legal systems.The fifth chapter made a comparative analysis on the principles, measures and systems of punishment to unit (corporate) crime between France and China. The following conclusions are drawn. First of all, on the principle of punishment, although both of the two countries have adopted a mixed system of punishment mechanism, however the applicable object of the single penalty system is different:while the single penalty system is applicable to the corporate in France, that is applicable to the natural person in China.Secondly, on the measures of punishment, although both of the two countries have provided a fine penalty, the provisions are quite different. Moreover, qualification penalties applicable to the corporate are stipulated in French penal code, nevertheless they do not exist in Chinese penal code.Last, on the system of punishment, the french penal code has provided recidivism, probation and rehabilitation, yet there is no relative provision in Chinese penal code. Only in a judicial interpretation, the confession has been provided to be applied to unit.Based on the comparative analysis of the five chapters above, the sixth chapter is to put suggestions on the issue of establishing a complete legislation system for unit crime. Specifically, the suggestions involve two aspects, the essence of unit crime and the punishement to unit. On the one hand, on the essence of unit crime, the scope of "organ" should be reduced to limit the subject of crime and the scope of crimes should be expanded. On the other hand, on the punishment, the fine penalty should be improved and the qualification penalties’ system should be established to adjust the measures of punishement to unit, while at meantime, the system of recidivist and probation should be revised and the system of rehabilitation shoud be built to enrich the system of punishment which is applicable to unit. |
