The Study On The Reform Of Detaining For Reeducation System In China

Detaining for reeducation system originated from the Europe in the sixteenth century, and achieved great developments in European and American areas. American Juvenile Court shoulders the responsibility of detaining for reeducation the criminals of under the age of 16 years old, which symbolizes the legalization of the juvenile detaining for reeducation system. Afterwards, countries successively have formulated and promulgated the juvenile laws and meanwhile perfected the juvenile detaining for reeducation system. In China, with the founding of new China with the construction and developments of country’s socialism government ruled by law, the detaining for reeducation system has gradually formed and developed as a system of correcting juvenile criminals. The term of “detaining for reeducation system” was firstly put forward in 1956 and in 1979, Chinese Criminal Law confirmed this formulation in the form of legal text. The targets of upbringing and custody are normal juvenile criminals under 16 years old who are not given criminal punishment. Subjects of the custody and upbringing system are government sectors. The condition for implementing the system is “under necessary circumstance”. The aim of the detaining for reeducation system is to reeducate and correct these juvenile criminals by collectively and compulsorily reeducating these juvenile criminals. there are clear differences between detaining for reeducation system, and custody education, and education through labor.With the abolition of the custody and labor system, the survival and development of detaining for reeducation system have been confronted with unprecedented challenges and criticisms, which to a large extent are due to the system’s own insufficiency and non-standard problems in existence. Through objective analysis, China’s current detaining for reeducation system has following problems in the aspect of legislature and judicature, namely the absence of legal basis, obvious substantive and procedural defects. The absence of legal basis is mainly manifested in two aspects; on the one hand, relevant legal norms are obscure or lag behind, and one the other hand, the rank of validity of legal norms which served as legal basis of the detaining for reeducation system is low and they come into conflict with upper laws. Substantive defects are manifested in that the system’s nature, the applicable terms and conditions of the target have not been clearly regulated, in the absence of clear regulations on the minimum requirements and legal consequence. Procedural defects are mainly manifested in that the system lacks proper judicial procedure, children lack necessary legal relief measures, and the deterministic process is short of supervision.Due to that there exist some flaws in China’s current detaining for reeducation system, it is of great necessity to perfect and improve the detaining for reeducation system based on China’s theory of criminal law. First, it should perfect the substantive provisions. It is advisable that NPC Standing Committee should make amendments or legislative interpretation on Article 17 Section 4 of China’s criminal law; it should clearly stipulate that only under certain serious circumstances such as the child’s deliberate bad habits are so serious that parents or guardian cannot manage, can the detaining for reeducation system be employed; it should adjust the age and it should adjust the custody period to more than 6 months and less than 2 years. Second, it should improve the procedural rules of the detaining for reeducation system. The deterministic process should be judicialized and determined by People’s Court; relevant parties must be given full rights of defending; authorized the power of supervision by law, people’s procuratorate shall supervise the decision and implementation of detaining for reeducation system. In addition, it should perfect and improve the implementation and management parts of detaining for reeducation system. It shall be clearly regulated that the executive organ is the public security organ; it shall establish custody and upbringing offices; it shall further subdivide the upbringing system and it should consist of custody upbringing and community upbringing and it should increase the latter form. It shall improve supporting systems of supervision after upbringing.