A Research On The Harboring Criminals

The1997Criminal Law has revised the charge, but it does not mean that theprovisions for harboring are perfect. In fact, a controversy is often aroused on thehomologation and the penalty for it in theory and practice so that a series of problemsare waiting for solution. Therefore, the author, on the basis of commenting onacademics views and learning from foreign criminal legislation about harboringcriminals, use methods of comparative research and empirical analysis and discussproblems in harboring criminals. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, thepaper tries to illustrate from the following four chapters and makes a deep thoroughstudy on the crime of harboring criminals.The first chapter examines status of legislation of the harboring criminals indomestic and international criminal law. The harboring criminals appears from theexistence of crime in humanity history, and there are relevant records during the periodof Babylon, and also "Rites of the Zhou" is clearly recorded. This chapter focuses ondomestic and international legislation relating to the historical process of emergence,development and evolution on it. Both civil law countries and common law countriestend to act it as a common crime rather than a separate crime in the early criminal law.With the development of awareness, it gradually becomes an alone offense and convertsincreasingly clear in criminal behavior. In ancient China, the provisions of this crime isconcentrated in “Tang Dynasty’s law”. In the Qing Dynasty, it increases the contents ofthe "Destruction of Evidence "drawing on the experience of foreign legislative. In NewChina, the Criminal Law has made several modifications on the crime.The second chapter analyzes constitution of the harboring criminals, which is theimportant chapter. This chapter, according to the four elements about the constitution ofcrime in Chinese criminal law theory and combining relevant legislation and legal cases,puts forward to some personal views. On the object, it divides domestic points of theoffense against legal interest into three categories. On the objective aspect, it mainlydiscusses on two questions. Firstly, it is the behavior of elements focusing on definitionof "harboring" and "covering up" and considers understanding meaning of the behaviorof the crime in a wide sense. It answers two questions: the relationship between"providing a concealed or property" and "assisting in fleeting " and the problem of "shielding" including the behavior of "helping destroy or falsify evidence" or not.Secondly, it is object elements, focusing on the understanding of the "offender" onlyrefered to the person declared the guilty by court. On the subject, it selects the threeaspects to study, which are the offender can become the subject of the crime, the crimeblind person who hide or harbor themselves can become the subject of the crime, theoffender’s relatives can become the subject of this crime. On the subjective aspects, itdiscourses the Criminal Law provisions "knowing" including the content and time of"knowing".The third chapter analyses problems in judicial homologation, which is mainlythe crime and non-crime of harboring criminals, patterns of crime. Firstly it discussesthe silence of the suspect in the investigation process, whether the conduct constitutes acrime and puts forward views through a case, which is the innovation of this paper.Then, it expresses views about the behaviour of compounding or insiders who do notinform true clues to the police in the criminal cases whether the conduct constitute thecrime. Finally, it discusses the determination of the accomplished of the crime.The final chapter discusses from the point view on legislation improvement of thecrime. It proposes proposal aimed to judicial practice refered to foreign legislativeexperience. There are mainly two issues: the first one is the improvements of thebehaviour of harboring and the offender and the second one is the establishment of thelimited system of hiding crime of relatives in China.