The Revision Of Statutory Penalty:A Reflection On Its Trend

The core of criminal law norms is crime and punishment.Although conviction has normative significance,in a sense,punishment has ultimate significance.If the setting and application of charges have a very strong regional color,and are largely constrained by the socio-economic,cultural and development characteristics of a jurisdiction,then although the penalty also has certain independent characteristics,because it involves human freedom,and even human life,so it is relatively more universal.In this sense,how to determine the rationality of the penalty system is obviously more fundamental than the rationality of the conviction system.Looking back at the 11 amendments to the Criminal Law that have been promulgated since the Criminal Law of my country in 1997,8 of them involve the adjustment of statutory punishment.It can be said that the adjustment of statutory punishment has become an important feature of criminal law revision.It is undoubtedly of great significance to summarize the trend of statutory penalty amendment and reflect on it.The first chapter summarizes the part of the promulgated criminal law amendments concerning statutory penalty amendment,and shows the main performance areas of statutory penalty in the process of penalty amendment.At the level of adjustment of the principal penalty,the statutory maximum penalty and statutory minimum penalty are both raised or lowered,and there is an adjustment within the range of penalties;at the level of additional penalties,not only is the fine penalty increased or decreased,but there are also many changes in the application method.Other penalties for deprivation of political rights and confiscation of property have also been adjusted.The second chapter summarizes the trend of severe punishment in the revision of criminal law.On the one hand,clarify the meaning of "heavy punishment",which refers to the trend of raising the statutory sentence in the process of criminal law revision.On the other hand,it summarizes the severe punishment performance of criminal law amendments.Firstly,the stagnation of the death penalty abolition process and the increase in life imprisonment reflect the expansion trend of heavy penalty;secondly,"Criminal Law Amendment(XI)" removes control for the first time.The direction of adjustment is mainly to delete,and the types of light sentences in existing crimes show a shrinking trend;thirdly,from the perspective of the adjustment ratio of penalty range,increasing the legal maximum penalty accounts for the highest proportion;fourthly,The change of additional penalty also showed a trend of aggravating.The third chapter discuss the reasons why the revision of criminal law moves towards severe punishment,and reflect on it.From a social point of view,first,responding to social risks by increasing statutory sentences is an excessive response to the risk society;Second,it fails to rationally view the role of criminal law in social governance,there are many disadvantages of excessive criminalization of social governance.From a theoretical point of view,first,failing to carefully evaluate the preventive effect of punishment,and raising the statutory punishment for crimes is by no means an effective strategy to curb crime;Second,it is too simple to understand the criminal policy of combining leniency and severity,which is not a simple combination of leniency and strictness,and its center should be based on the promotion dimension of leniency.The fourth chapter puts forward the adjustment concept of the legal maximum penalty for severe crime.In the first place,the principle and approach of punishment allocation should be established.On the one hand,the allocation of punishment should abide by the principle of adaptation to guilt and punishment and the principle of modesty.On the other hand,the allocation of punishment needs to consider the following factors:(1)The degree of harm of the behavior is determined by the type of legal interest and culpability,which determines the degree of retribution,and then delimits the penalty boundary.(2)General prevention should be determined by the subjective content and the judicial application frequency of the crime,and it can further reduce the legal maximum penalty on the basis of the penalty boundary that has been delimited by retribution.Second,it is necessary to specifically adjust the statutory maximum penalty for serious crimes.For one thing,continue to gradually abolish the death penalty to promote the coordination of the proportion of punishment;For another thing,life imprisonment and 15-year fixed-term imprisonment must meet certain conditions for the maximum statutory punishment.On the premise of clarifying the allocation conditions,it is necessary to reconfigure the legal maximum penalty for severe crimes.