Studies About The Limitation Period Of Criminal Law Prosecution

Criminal prosecution limitation is an important criminal law system as alimitation on countries for sentence recommendations and the power toexecute punishment. Based on the basic principles and main function ofcriminal law, the criminal prosecution limitation serves as a measure ofremedying for the offenders who may fall into the area where the criminallaw is not covering, so that it can help achieving the ultimate goals in justice,common interests, operational efficiency as well as social orders. This paperprovides few improvement suggestions for legislation and actual practicesthrough analyzing the issues from existing rules of criminal prosecutionlimitation as well as the divergences&disputes existed in the criminal lawtheory and the judicial practices regarding the starting date of the limitationperiod, the extension of limitation, interruption, and suitability for extension,etc. This paper is mainly divided into five chapters: The first chapter outlinesthe issues of the criminal prosecution limitation system in terms of its basicdefinition, the function, the cause of setting up and setting standards as well.The second chapter elaborates the legislation deficiency in view of thestarting date, the time of interruption, the date of extension through analyzingactual practices. The third chapter presents views regarding the suitability ofcriminal prosecution limitation and the retroactive effect of criminal lawthrough the case of the judicial explanation from the Supreme Court. Thefourth chapter is combining the theory of criminal law and judicial practices,investigating and discussing issues relating to the crime prosecutionlimitation for individual negligent crime, corporate crime, international crimeas well as the suitability for extension, the punishment for exceeding the timelimit; further, it puts forward relevant solutions to the foresaid issues. Thechapter five, based on practicality and relevant foreign laws, proposesspecific and actionable legislation suggestions for setting up the criterion andthe extension system, optimizing the prosecution limitation systems forinterruption, suspension, suitability for extension, corporate crime, andinternational crimes, etc; so as to rationalize the system design and to make itmuch easier for implementation.