A Study On The Punishability Of Neutral Helping Acts

Neutral helping behaviour is behaviour that appears harmless in appearance,but objectively promotes the commission of a crime by another person.This property of “daily behaviour” has led to the criminal accountability of neutral helping behaviour is controversial,which is not only an unsolvable dilemma in theory but also difficult to identify in judicial practice.Nowadays,in the era of information networks,the traditional theory of accomplice is difficult to adapt to the new changes of information cybercrime,resulting in no clear judgment criteria on whether the neutral helping behaviour constitutes a crime.Therefore,there is an urgent need to reshape the punishability criteria of neutral helping behaviour to draw the boundary between crime and non-crime.This study takes the crime of helping information cybercrime activities as the starting point for research,based on the legislative provisions and judicial status to summarize the current theoretical achievements analyzes deeply the punishability criteria of neutral helping behaviour,and clarifies that its incrimination can only be based on the objective behaviour itself,thus concluding that the punishability of neutral helping behaviour should be should be judged by introducing“professional equivalence theory” on the basis of “objective imputation theory”.Specifically,the judgement path of the punishability of neutral helping behaviour is as follows: firstly,the punishability of neutral helping behaviour depends on whether the risk is increasing;secondly,under the premise that the increasing behaviour risk,the social status of the actor should be taken into account to determine whether the increased risk violates the relevant professional community norms;thirdly,to judge whether the risk is within the specification protection purpose.This paper consists of introduction,body and conclusion.The body is divided into the following four parts.The first part of the paper provides an overall analysis of the definition and current situation of neutral helping behaviour.By comprehensively deconstructing the core features of the neutral helping behaviour to clarify the “professionality” feature is its essential feature,and taking the “professionality” feature as the judgment base is more conducive to the determination of the punishability criteria.At the same time,we identify the relationship between neutral helping behaviour,neutral behaviour and helping behaviour,and clarify the distinction between them,so as to lay a theoretical foundation for later analysis in the context of the crime of helping information cybercrime activities.In addition,by sorting out the provisions in the legislative provisions and typical cases in judicial practice,we analyze the problems brought by unclear punishability criteria and explore the punishability criteria of neutral helping behaviour with a problem-oriented approach.The second part provides an in-depth analysis of neutral helping behaviours in the crime of helping information cybercrime activities,focusing on examining its peculiarities and clarifying the basic definition of neutral helping behaviour under the crime of helping information cybercrime activities.From the background of the establishment and the legislative positioning of the crime of helping information cybercrime activities,to sort out the relevant doctrines of legislative positioning and to make clear that it is a “sentencing rule” rather than “taking the aider as the principal offender”,and still belongs to the category of substantive helpers.The speciality of neutral helping behaviour in the crime of helping information cybercrime activities is mainly reflected in two respects the behaviour nature and the scope of punishment.On the one hand,through the qualitative analysis of the behaviour of helping information cybercrime activities,it is clear that the behaviour of helping information cybercrime activities is the product of a combination of helping behaviour and neutral helping behaviour;on the other hand,through the exploration of the scope of punishment for the crime of helping information cybercrime activities,we study the reasons and effects of the improper expansion of the scope of punishment for this crime,and further affirm the appropriateness of limiting its punishability by establishing punishability criteria.The third part discusses the theoretical controversy over the foundation of punishment of neutral helping behaviour and the path of punishment restriction and provides ideas and directions for the selection of the theoretical basis of punishability criteria.The basis of punishment for accomplices is a fundamental issue of the theory of accomplices.“The theory of mixed causation” believes that the condition of punishment for accomplice is the existence of both illegal association and illegal relativity.In the context of neutral helping behaviour,even if it is illegal for the principal offender,the helping offender can be excluded from the illegal under certain conditions,which provides valid theoretical support for the exclusion of unlawful.In addition,the most important thing is to grasp the essence of the criteria for the selection of the punishability of neutral helping behaviour,that is,neutral helping behaviour is the existence of subjective knowledge and objective causality to judge the punishability of neutral helping behaviour,and objective behaviour is more reasonable,so based on the “objective imputation theory” is more appropriate.The core is based on the “objective imputation theory” and the combination of“professional equivalence theory” to judge the punishability of neutral helping behaviour,which is more reasonable and operable compared with other doctrines.The fourth part comprehensively demonstrates the feasibility of the punishability criteria of the judgement of the neutral helping behaviour based on the “objective imputation theory” and the“professional equivalence theory”,and defines the punishability criteria of the neutral helping behaviour under the crime of helping information cybercrime activities.By delineating the path of attribution of neutral helping behaviour,analyzing the core meanings of the “objective imputation theory” and the“professional equivalence theory”,and further clarifying the appropriateness of the judgement of the punishability criteria based on the “objective imputation theory” and the combination of “professional equivalence theory”.In addition,the theory is used to analyze the typology of the crime of helping information cybercrime activities and to explore the practical effects of the punishability criteria of the neutral helping behaviour,so that the theory can be applied to judicial practice.