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The Imposition of CSM in China

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Governance, Social Control and Legal Reform in China

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Abstract

Drawing on scenario test, interviews and secondary resources, this chapter discusses the imposition of CSM in China. The chapter is divided into four parts. Part One outlines the legal framework of Chinese CSM. Parts Two and Three elaborate on the imposition of parole (jiashi) and suspended prison sentence (huanxing), as they are the most widely applied CSM in China. Based on these discussions, Part Four analyses how the Chinese judiciary responds to the CSM reform under disciplinary governance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As amended by the following nine Amendments (xingfa xiuzheng’an).

  2. 2.

    The Ministry of Justice [2003]12. 即司法部司发[2003]年12号《关于开展社区矫正试点工作的通知》.

  3. 3.

    According to Yang’s study, out of the 945 offenders he surveyed, none was under community supervision due to a sentence of control. Interviewees A1-3 (justice officer) and B5-26 (social worker) made similar comments based on their experience.

  4. 4.

    According to Chinese criminal law, if an offender is sentenced to five years’ imprisonment plus three years’ deprivation of political rights, he shall enjoy no political rights during the five years’ imprisonment, and the deprivation will continue to be effective in the first three years after his release.

  5. 5.

    Interview, district justice officer A1-3. Justice officers are the local agents of the Ministry of Justice.

  6. 6.

    SPC [2011]9, Regulation on the Application of Restriction orders 最高人民法院法发 [2011]9号《关于对判处管制、宣告缓刑的犯罪分子适用禁止令有关问题的规定(试行)》.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., Article 1.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., Article 3.

  9. 9.

    See the discussion about challenges and opportunities for CSM reform in Chap. 3.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., Article 4.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., Article 5.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., Article 12.

  13. 13.

    Article 81 of the 1997 Criminal Code specifies that recidivists and offenders who are sentenced to more than ten years’ imprisonment for murder, explosion, robbery, rape and kidnapping should not be paroled. However, it must be stressed that ‘recidivist’ is a narrowly defined term in Chinese criminal law (Article 65). To qualify as a ‘recidivist’ in China, an offender must have been imprisoned for an intentional offence before; his current offence must also be an intentional crime; the current offence must happen within five years since he served the sentence for the earlier crime; the new crime must at least justify a fixed-term prison sentence.

  14. 14.

    Group interview, ex-prisoners A4-23 and A4-24.

  15. 15.

    Interview, district justice officer A1-3.

  16. 16.

    Interview, social worker B5-26.

  17. 17.

    Group interview, ex-prisoners A4-23 and A4-24. Both of them have spent more than ten years in prison. Ex-prisoner A4-23 was a recidivist who was convicted of theft during the ‘strike hard campaign 1983’ and imprisoned for seven years. He was convicted of fraud again in 2001 and imprisoned until 2012. Ex-prisoner A4-24 was convicted of robbery with aggravating circumstances and imprisoned since the early 1990s until 2012. The time they spent in Chinese prisons reinforced the reliability of their comments.

  18. 18.

    Article 78 of the 1997 Criminal Code.

  19. 19.

    Article 81 of the 1997 Criminal Code.

  20. 20.

    Article 68 of the 1997 Criminal Code.

  21. 21.

    Article 68 of the 1997 Criminal Code.

  22. 22.

    Interviews, law professor/CSM expert/legislation advisors A1-17 and A1-40.

  23. 23.

    Article 10.

  24. 24.

    Group interview, ex-prisoners A4-23 and A4-24.

  25. 25.

    Both of them are called ‘labour camps’ in China, but there are some differences between them; see Table 3.1 in Chap. 3.

  26. 26.

    Interview, labour camp guard and former social worker B8-39. He used to work in these community rehabilitation projects, because in Site B drug abusers are also covered by the local CSM projects. More details will be discussed in Chap. 5.

  27. 27.

    Interview, police officer A4-25.

  28. 28.

    Group interview, ex-prisoners A4-23 and A4-24; Interview, half-way house police officer, former labour camp guard A4-25.

  29. 29.

    Interview, judge A1-10; Group interview, ex-prisoners A4-23 and A4-24.

  30. 30.

    Interview, judge A1-10. Concurred by Hua’s (2014) report.

  31. 31.

    In Chinese criminal procedure, if victims or their families demand financial compensation, the criminal court will hold ancillary civil trial (fudai minshi susong) to determine the offender’s civil liability.

  32. 32.

    SPC [ 2011 ]9, Regulation on the Application of Restriction orders 最高人民法院法发 [2011]9号《关于对判处管制、宣告缓刑的犯罪分子适用禁止令有关问题的规定(试行)》.

  33. 33.

    Interviews, judges A1-4 and A1-10; Group interview, prosecutor B6-30 and judge B7-29.

  34. 34.

    Group interview, ex-prisoners A4-23 and A4-24.

  35. 35.

    Municipal court is the appeal court for cases tried by the district courts.

  36. 36.

    The offender in this case was a female accessory to illegal possession of drugs (feifa chiyou dupin zui).

  37. 37.

    Interview, judge A1-10.

  38. 38.

    Article 34 of the 2012 CPL.

  39. 39.

    Group interview, ex-prisoners A4-23 and A4-24.

  40. 40.

    It should be noted that in China, the SPC publishes ‘model cases’ regularly to guide the sentencing activities in lower courts. To ensure that the participants were not influenced by the SPC’s authoritative opinion, none of the three scenarios were based on these ‘model cases’.

  41. 41.

    A sample of the test form can be found in Appendix 2.

  42. 42.

    Interview, prosecutor B6-27.

  43. 43.

    In China, a criminal tribunal is often made up by two judges and a juror. One of the two judges shall be appointed as the presiding judge. Assistants cannot be the presiding judge in a trial.

  44. 44.

    Article 9, Section 4 of SPC [2005]8, Guidelines on the Trial of Robbery Cases 《关于审理抢劫、抢夺刑事案件适用法律若干问题的意见》.

  45. 45.

    Articles 263 and 293 of the 1997 Criminal Code.

  46. 46.

    The age of criminal responsibility is 16 in China except some very serious crimes for which children aged between 14 and 16 should also bear responsibility. All offenders aged 14–18 are deemed as juveniles, and they are entitled to lesser punishments. See Article 17 of the 1997 Criminal Code.

  47. 47.

    Article 72.

  48. 48.

    According to Article 263, these circumstances include committing robbery with a gun, causing death or grave injuries to victims during robbery, robbing a bank or other financial institutions, robbing on public transport, impersonating police officers or military personnel in robbery and robbing military resources.

  49. 49.

    Interviews, judge A1-4 and prosecutor B6-35.

  50. 50.

    Article 63 of the 1997 Criminal Code.

  51. 51.

    The 1997 Criminal Code specifies several mitigating circumstances that judges should consider when deciding a punishment, for example, voluntary surrender, age at the time of crime (below 18 or over 75) or meritorious service. See Articles 17, 67, 68 and 72.

  52. 52.

    Usually ‘senior cadres’ include president of the court, heads of the criminal, civil and administrative divisions, experienced judges and officers of the Party committee.

  53. 53.

    Article 10, Organisational Law of the People’s Courts 《人民法院组织法》第10条.

  54. 54.

    Interviews, judge A1-4, judge A1-10, scholar and senior prosecutor A1-16.

  55. 55.

    Villagers’ Committee (in rural areas) and Residents’ Committee (in urban areas) are supposed to be autonomous organisations of citizens. Members of these committees should be elected by villagers or residents of local communities and serve for the voters’ welfare. However, in practice they are more like subsidiary bodies of the grassroots governments. Sometimes they are entitled to excercise some powers of the governments.

  56. 56.

    In China, the IDCs (jijianwei) are the in-house anti-corruption force of the Party. IDCs are not part of the formal justice system, but their participation in the investigation of corruption crime is ‘agreed practice’ (Interviews, judge A1-4 and prosecutor B6-27). During investigation, IDCs have the equal, if not greater, authority as procuratorates and police forces. They can detain suspects and interrogate them. Moreover, the investigation activities of IDCs are not regulated by criminal laws.

  57. 57.

    SPC [2003]167, Summary of the SPC’s National Conference on the Trial of Economic Crimes 《全国法院审理经济犯罪案件工作座谈会纪要》.

  58. 58.

    Interview, judge A1-4; Group interview, judge B7-29 and prosecutor B6-30.

  59. 59.

    Interviews, judge A1-4 and prosecutor B6-27.

  60. 60.

    Article 67 of the 1997 Criminal Code.

  61. 61.

    The SPC [2012]17, Opinions on Restricting the Use of Probation and Discharge in Corruption Cases 《关于办理职务犯罪案件严格适用缓刑、免予刑事处罚若干问题的意见》.

  62. 62.

    Articles 266 and 280. Note that in Chinese criminal law, punishments for property crimes are closely tied to the amount of money obtained. The SPC’s Guidelines on the Application of Laws in Fraud Cases define ‘large amount of money’ as 30,000–500,000 yuan. X’s case falls into this category.

  63. 63.

    Interviews, judge A1-4, prosecutors B6-27 and B6-35; Group interview, judge B7-29 and prosecutor B6-30.

  64. 64.

    See Appendix 3.

  65. 65.

    The 1997 Criminal Code divides all crimes into ten categories: (1) crimes against state safety, (2) crimes against public safety, (3) crimes disturbing the order of Socialist market economy, (4) crimes against the person, (5) property crimes, (6) crimes disturbing the order of social management, (7) crimes against national defence, (8) corruption crimes, (9) dereliction of duty crimes, and (10) military crimes. This is an overcomplicated classification based on revolutionary ideology. Here I count Category 3 and Category 5 as ‘property crimes’ and Category 2 and Category 6 as ‘public order crimes’. Also, in Chinese criminal law, robbery is counted as ‘crime against the person’, not ‘property crime’, here I follow the tradition.

  66. 66.

    Interview, judge A1-4; Group interview, judge B7-29 and prosecutor B6-30.

  67. 67.

    SPC [2010]9, Guidance on Enforcing the Policy of Combining Harshness with Leniency. 即《最高人民法院关于贯彻宽严相济刑事政策的若干意见》.

  68. 68.

    Ibid., Article 5.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., Article 4, Article 16.

  70. 70.

    Interviews, judge A1-4, A1-10, B7-27; Group interview, judge B7-29 and B6-30.

  71. 71.

    Interviews, justice officer A1-3, justice officer A1-8, social worker B5-26 and justice officer B6-32.

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    Qi Chen

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Chen, Q. (2018). The Imposition of CSM in China. In: Governance, Social Control and Legal Reform in China. Palgrave Advances in Criminology and Criminal Justice in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71864-4_4

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