浅谈中国社区矫正制度的现状及改善方案

Abstract

On December 28th, 2019, National People’s Congress (“NPC) passed the Community Corrections Law in the 13th Standing Committee meeting. The law came into effect on July 1st, 2020. The implementation of the law marks the starting point of community correction in China and provided the legal framework for work related to community correction. However, the intention of enforcement by legislator is built on the thinking of unilateral protectionism. This creates deviation from the actual implementation of the law when considering the purpose of legislation, community correction nature, personnel working for community correction related agencies and the scope of enforcement. For example, if “correction” is the sole intention of the legislation and the act is enforced at a criminal charge level, the law should not only confer community correction agencies non-compulsory enforcement authority such as monitoring, providing educational support and warning. The overly idealistic intention of community correction lawmaking will hinder the efficiency and impact in the actual implementation. Thus, amendments should be passed to detail the criminal enforcement protocol, making community correction, as being a non-imprisonment matter, serve the dual functions of punishment and protection (mainly for protection). Ideally, the amendment can confer community correction agency personnel the authority to act as policemen and use police equipment under certain circumstances, hold individuals committing criminal activities in custody and other compulsory authoritarian activities. If such authority is granted, the effectiveness and deterrence of community correction work will substantially improve, which truly aligns the impact and intention of community correction.