Research On The Decriminalization Of Usury

With the continuous development of market economy,usury cases are more and more.Because the practice of lending induces other malignant crimes,people hate it and call it the malignant tumor of society.There is no clear definition of usury in academic circles.Many scholars,influenced by traditional ideas and foreign legislation on usury,advocate that civil usury should be criminalized.At the present stage,there are no specific legal provisions on the crime of usury in our criminal law,so there is no sufficient legal basis for the disposal of usury cases.Faced with the frequent usury cases in recent years,the judicial organs through the analogy of specific provisions of the criminal law to find the specific basis for conviction and sentencing of criminal suspects.Beginning with the "Tuhanjiang" case in 2003,the usury behavior is punished as illegal business crime.Many scholars also advocate that it be included in the criminal penalty.However,the essence of usury is a kind of private lending and a contractual relationship based on voluntary equality between the two parties.Therefore,usury does not conform to the "other illegal business practices that seriously disturb the order of market economy" mentioned in Article 225 of the Criminal Law.Based on the current situation of our country and the research data of scholars at home and abroad,the author believes that usury is a kind of usury.Loan is not a criminal act,nor does it have the elements of constituting the crime of illegal business operation,and should not be treated as a criminal act.In practice,usury is punished as a crime of illegal operation,which violates the legality of the crime and at the same time undermines the principle of rule of law in our country.What we should do is to analyze the reasons for the persistence of usury,to find out the root of usury,to control it from the root,and to insist that it violates the modesty of criminal law and the criminal policy of tempering leniency with severity.And China has promulgated the General Principles of Civil Law.The essence of folk usury is folk lending,which belongs to civil legal relationship and belongs to the scope of civil law regulation.