On The Application Of Life Imprisonment In China

Life imprisonment is a special penalty execution method of China’s criminal law for major corruption and bribery crimes,which was first stipulated in the Amendment IX to the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China in 2015.Since the implementation of this system,there have been many cases of life imprisonment in our country.Based on the statistics and analysis of the existing cases of life imprisonment,we can find some rules of the application of the system,and then reflect on the problems in the application of the system.With regard to the existing cases of life imprisonment in the judicial system,through the analysis of such elements as the "amount involved","losses caused to national interests" and "circumstances of repentance",it can be seen that: the huge amount involved is the main basis for the application of life imprisonment,and the amount of the crime is within the range of CNY200 million to CNY1 billion;under the premise of the huge amount involved,the circumstances of repentance of the offender,especially the voluntary surrender and major meritorious services,are the important considerations for the sentence of life imprisonment;according to the existing cases,after the implementation of the system of life imprisonment,it does not completely replace the effect of the immediate execution of the death penalty,and in reality,there are still serious corrupt offenders sentenced to the immediate execution of the death penalty;in addition,in light of the anti-corruption trend in China,the common feature of the current sentence of life imprisonment criminals is that "the offender will not be accepted after the 18 th National Congress".Combined with the application of the system in the judiciary,there are mainly the following problems in life imprisonment: First,life imprisonment does not apply to commutation system,actually negates the major meritorious service system in life imprisonment.According to the provisions of the Criminal Law of our country,during the probation period of the death penalty with a suspension of execution,if the offender has significant meritorious service and can still be commuted to 25 years of fixed-term imprisonment,while life imprisonment denies the role of significant meritorious service,which violates the principle of light weightlifting;secondly,the offender sentenced to life imprisonment shall not be commuted or paroled,so that he can no longer return to the society,so that the offender loses the impetus for reform and has the stigma of violating the punishment;finally,life imprisonment,as a substitute measure for death penalty,is of positive significance for reducing the death penalty,but it is only applicable to the crime of corruption and bribery,and its application scope is too narrow.In view of the above deficiencies,firstly,the application of the system of major meritorious services in life imprisonment shall be affirmed,and therefore the change of penalty shall be affected;because the conditions for the establishment of major meritorious services are more stringent,the introduction of the system shall not materially affect the deterrent effect of life imprisonment;secondly,the mode of execution of life imprisonment shall be moderately changed,that is,the criminals shall be moderately rewarded to regain the reform momentum,and such award may adopt the system of visiting relatives from prison;for criminals who are old or have lost the ability to work,based on the humanitarian consideration of "rehabilitation",the system of execution outside prison or medical parole may be adopted.Finally,with regard to the scope of application of life imprisonment,it may be considered to expand the application of life imprisonment to those types of crimes with abominable criminal nature and serious criminal consequences,such as crimes of terrorist activities and crimes against national security;for criminals,it is necessary to consider factors such as their guilty plea,personal danger and the possibility of recidivism.