The Function Of Compensation For Losses In Sentencing

The damage of criminal act is all-round. On the one hand, it breaks certain social relations and undermines the king's peace. On the other hand, it breaks certain legal interests and causes material and moral damages to the victim. In our country's criminal law, there are specific provisions on what kind of criminal liability should be born by the offender. However, these legal provisions with disciplinary are only stipulated to punish the offender and maintain the social order. This kind of punishment on the offender makes the victim do the justice and comforts the victim to a certain context, but the punishment cannot make the victim's material and moral damages up. At the same time, a lot of victims may be in a jam because of the crime and they may have a deep resentment against society, all of which are not good for the resolve of social contradictions and recover of social order.To recover the victim's losses, our criminal law stipulates that the offender should make compensation for the victim's economic loss or compensate for losses, which is realized in the civil suit collateral to criminal proceedings. In our current juridical practices, this kind of compensation for losses becomes a expression of the offender's contrition and reduction of social harmfulness, and it has a certain effect on the accused person's measurement of penalty.There are a lot of controversies on the nature, scope and the role in sentencing of compensation for losses. Some scholars believe that the nature of compensation for losses stipulated in the criminal law is the method of bearing criminal liability. Others think that it is the method of bearing civil liability. In our criminal law, the scope of compensation for losses is limited to the victim's direct and actual property loss and the provisions which exclude the victim's material and moral damages are always criticized. In addition, to the role in sentencing of compensation for losses, some people think that it is a show of the rich's spending money on punishment and it is a kind of judicial unfairness. And some people think that it helps encouraging the offender to compensate the victim's loss and it is good for the resolve of social contradictions and recover of the king's peace.On the base of comparative analysis of these controversies, this paper goes a step further to discuss the basis, reflect and existing problems of the role in sentencing of compensation for losses. At the same time, the paper puts forward the way to regulate and improve the role in sentencing of compensation for losses, that is, to define the premise and dimension of the role in sentencing of compensation for losses by regulating and improving the definition and component of compensation for losses by lawmaking and juridical practicing.