刑罚作用理论反思与量刑改革

刑罚的目的主要是剥夺犯罪的能力,报复、预防犯罪以及改过自新;影响量刑的因素除了犯罪构成的因素以外,主要有量刑的目的、犯罪嫌疑人的认罪、其他影响刑罚作用的因素等.为达到刑罚的目的,必须对量刑机制进行改革,主要涉及五项原则,四项指导意见.     

单位犯罪刑罚体系的探究--以单位刑事责任的追究为视角

我国1997年新刑法中确立的单位犯罪刑罚体系存在罚则不统一、刑种单一的缺陷,限制并妨碍了对单位犯罪刑事责任的有效追究。通过对刑法分则中规定的适用单罚制的单位犯罪进行分类,并据此深入分析,运用"社会契约论"和"主体双重性"理论,在限制性剥夺犯罪单位对其组成成员以及社会履行基本义务的能力的基础上,重构单位犯罪刑罚体系。     

量刑法定化:罪刑法定原则内涵的应有拓展

罪刑法定原则必须与时俱进,刑法规范内容的多样化必然带来罪刑法定原则内容的多样化,但罪刑法定原则长期被学界定位为犯罪与刑罚的法定化,无法充分体现其限制刑罚权滥用的制度价值。随着刑事司法中的最大问题由罪刑擅断到量刑不公的转变,罪刑法定原则的内涵亦应该有所拓展,即从"犯罪与刑罚之法定化"的二元格局迈向"犯罪、刑罚与量刑之法定化"的三元格局。其中,评价范围与评价方法的法定化,就是量刑法定化的题中之义。     

日本量刑理论中的责任问题

<正> 一日本刑法理论中的"责任"达一概念,贯穿于定罪与量刑。在犯罪论中,责任与构成要件和违法性并列而作为犯罪成立的要件之一。在量刑论中,责任则被视为决定刑罚量的基础或根据。从这里引申出近代刑法的重大原则之一——责任主义。共含义有两个方面:(1)无责任则无刑罚,(2)刑罚必须与责任相均衡。     

中德(日)量刑基准之比较研究

在德日刑法中,受责任主义的规制,责任为刑罚规定了前提和界限,基于预防方面的考量不能僭越责任程度所决定的刑罚。相比之下,中国现行刑法的量刑基准理论与之虽貌合实神离,因为作为其量刑基准的刑事责任的大小是社会危害性与人身危险性评价的加权之值。我国现行量刑基准理论实际上是现行刑事责任理论体系的逻辑延伸。欲求我国量刑基准理论在逻辑上更为科学合理,在价值取向上彰显现代刑法之人权保障机能,则必以改善现行刑事责任理论体系为前提。改造的重点在于纠正将责任评价与刑罚量定混为一体的做法,将之予以分离,使之各得其所。作为犯罪后果负担的刑事责任只能由犯罪的严重性程度来决定,人身危险性因素不能用于评价犯罪与刑事责任,而只能在刑罚最后量定时做有利于犯罪人更新改造之缓和考量。     

个别预防论的源流

个别预防论得分为矫正论、剥夺犯罪能力论与综合论三支.不同派系的个别预防论有着各自的历史发展、主要代表人物及基本立论,而且,均既有其合理性又有其不合理之处.矫正论与剥夺犯罪能力论虽然分别认识到了刑罚的矫正与剥夺犯罪能力功能,但因仅仅将两者之一作为刑罚的目的而失之片面;综合论虽因兼顾刑罚的个别威吓、矫正与剥夺犯罪能力功能而在一定程度上克服了矫正论与剥夺犯罪能力论的片面性,但又因否定报应论而与社会正义观念相冲突、因贬低一般预防而有悖功利观念、因难于实施而不具有作为刑事实践的指南的意义.     

犯罪常态与量刑起点

根据并合主义与点的理论,应当在责任刑之下裁量预防刑;正确评价案件的罪行程度,是裁量责任刑的关键。任何一种类型的犯罪都有其常态,对具体案件罪行程度的评价,应以同种犯罪的常态为参照标准。法官不得将犯罪的常态评价为罪行严重,进而适用较重的刑罚。法官应当根据犯罪的常态确定量刑起点;由于常态犯罪属于相对较轻的犯罪,所以,与常态犯罪对应的量刑起点是法定刑中间刑偏下的刑罚乃至接近最低刑的刑罚。     

关于确定量刑基准方法的新思考

作者借助刑罚轻缓化这一司法理念在审判实践中的量化,在量刑基准理论中引入了“刑罚轻缓平均浮动系数”这一概念,从而对量刑基准点进行了大致、直观、科学的判断,提出了确定量刑基准的方法,即以“谦抑中间格”方法确定犯罪的量刑基准。     

严格规则与自由裁量酌定情节法定化刍议

作为犯罪法律后果的刑罚因涉及对公民最基本人权的剥夺,从而使得对其判定应当具有较其他法律责任更为严格的裁判标准。定罪与量刑作为刑事审判的两大环节,共同决定着刑事被告人的命运。由于犯罪构成要件的相对规范性和明确性,更兼理论与实务长期“重定罪轻量刑”之传统。发展迄今的定罪理论与立法已相当成熟完备，因而实务中定性错误的案件较为...     

试论刑罚目的的合理取向

一、刑罚目的取向的历史规律刑罚早期的目的不是预防犯罪,而是报应、惩罚犯罪。直到资产阶级取得统治地位后,才出现预防犯罪的思想。当时的预防指的是一般预防。它的理论前提是费尔巴哈的“心理强制”说。认为趋利避害、追求快乐、避免痛苦是人的普遍心理。一般预防的中心内容是用刑罚遏制潜在犯罪者。它在刑事政策的表现是“重典”,立法的基础是“犯罪行为中论”,法条以剥夺自由刑、生命刑为主。量刑是在     

Punishment justifications in rape cases: a community study

Norway is one of the countries with the most progressive criminal justice systems in the Western world. Traditionally, the Norwegian criminal justice system has been mainly based on treatment and deterrence perspectives. While it is believed that criminal justice practices should be in accordance with public attitudes, few studies in Scandinavia have investigated public attitudes towards criminal justice sanctions in a methodologically sound manner. The current study is the first to investigate the attitudes of the Norwegian public towards punishment of rapists. In a Norwegian community sample (N = 475) from 2005, participants found the typical sentencing severity of a convicted rapist too lenient. The participants did report that as a global sentencing orientation, they preferred incapacitation. When presented with a specific rape case, their sentencing judgements were oriented towards both incapacitation and retribution, but their global orientation were not related to their specific judgements. Aggravating circumstances (e.g. violence was used) were found to influence the participants’ judgements more than when no aggravating circumstances were present (e.g. no violence was used). Few gender or educational differences were found, which indicates that these attitudes towards punishment of rapists are quite consistent across demographical groups.     

论危害社会治安犯罪的惩治与预防

惩治危害社会治安的犯罪 ,是维护社会稳定、保障改革开放深入进行的必要之举 ,也是依法治国的重要内容。当前严重危害社会治安犯罪的主要特征是 :突发性、暴力性、有组织性和内外勾结型。为了有效打击严重危害社会治安的犯罪 ,促进社会治安的根本好转 ,在总结以往经验和不足的基础上 ,确立科学的惩治与预防严重危害社会治安犯罪的对策是非常必要的。这些对策应包括 :坚持依法、公正和效率原则 ,注重保护犯罪嫌疑人、被告人的合法权利 ;明确打击重点 ,针对不同性质的犯罪采取不同的措施 ;打击与反腐败相结合 ;化解民事矛盾 ,消除诱发因素 ;打击与预防相结合 ,完善综合治理体系     

The Silence of the Lambdas: Deterring Incapacitation Research

This essay provides an economist’s perspective on criminological research into incapacitation effects on crime. Our central argument is that criminologists would do well to substantially scale back the enterprise of trying to estimate the various behavioral parameters central to a micro-level approach to measuring incapacitation effects, including the annual rate of offending outside of prison (λ) and the lengths of criminal careers. One problem with this line of research is practical: for example, mean estimates of self-reported criminal activity by incarcerated prisoners are quite sensitive to reports by the most criminally active offenders. But the larger concern is conceptual—the incapacitation effects from a given change in sentencing policy may be undermined by the possibility of replacement effects, and at the same time omit other benefits that may arise from deterrent effects on crime. A more promising approach is to identify plausibly exogenous changes in sentencing policy in order to estimate the net impact on crime from the combined effects of incapacitation, deterrence and replacement.

Does Incapacitation Reduce Crime?

Questions and answers about incapacitation abound in all discussions about criminal justice policy. They are among the most pressing of all research issues, yet estimates about the incapacitation effect on crime vary considerably, and most are based on very old and incomplete estimates of the longitudinal pattern of criminal careers. This paper provides an overview of the incapacitation issue, highlights information on recent estimates of criminal careers that are useful to the incapacitation model, and outlines an ambitious research agenda for continued and expanded work on incapacitation and crime that centers on developing better estimates of the characteristics of criminal careers and their relevance to policy choices.

处罚法定视野下失信惩戒的规范进路

在新《行政处罚法》增设行政处罚定义条款的背景下,大部分失信惩戒措施都可以纳入行政处罚范畴。处罚法定原则是规范行政处罚的关键技术,现行失信惩戒制度在要件、效果、程序等维度上皆不同程度偏离了处罚法定原则,亟需纠偏。在要件法定层面,应对失信概念进行类型化提炼、拼接失信构成要件的规范分离,并增设主观过错要素;在效果法定层面,失信惩戒的设定应恪守法律保留、建立失信行为与惩戒措施的匹配规则,并在"一事不再罚"框架内实施惩戒;在程序法定层面,信息归集程序应符合《民法典》《个人信息保护法》设定的信息处理规则,处罚决定程序须在自动化处理和人工介入之间求得平衡并合理限定追究时效,信用修复程序则应完善修复条件,以及引入"信息修复"制度。     

The Incapacitation Effect of First-Time Imprisonment: A Matched Samples Comparison

Objectives

The logic of incapacitation is the prevention of crime via the forced removal of known offenders from the community. The challenge is to provide a plausible estimate of how many crimes an incarcerated individual would have committed, were s/he free in the community rather than confined in prison. The objective of this study is to provide estimates of the incapacitation effect of first-time imprisonment from a sample of convicted offenders.

Methods

The data are official criminal records of all individuals convicted in The Netherlands in 1997. Two different analytical strategies are used to estimate an incapacitation effect. First, the offending rate of the imprisoned individuals prior to their confinement in 1997 provides a “within-person counterfactual”. Second, imprisoned offenders are paired with comparable non-imprisoned offenders using the method of propensity score matching in order to estimate a “between-person counterfactual”. Incapacitation estimates are provided separately for juvenile imprisonment (ages 12–17) as well as adult imprisonment (ages 18–50), and for male and female offenders.

Results

The best estimate is that 1 year of incarceration prevents between 0.17 and 0.21 convictions per year. The use of additional data sources indicates that this corresponds to between roughly 2.0 and 2.5 criminal offenses recorded by the police.

Conclusions

The current results suggest that, insofar as imprisonment is used with the primary goal of reducing crime through incapacitation, a general increase in the use of incarceration as the sanction of choice is not likely to yield major crime control benefits.     

SELECTIVE INCAPACITATION AND THE PROBLEM OF PREDICTION*

Recent innovations in sentencing policy across the United States reveal a renewed interest in the idea of selective incapacitation of criminal offenders. This is perhaps most evident in the proliferation of “Three Strikes and You're Out” habitual-offender statutes across the nation. Although the term was first introduced by David Greenberg in 1975, Peter Greenwood and Allan Abrahamse's eponymous 1982 Rand report represents the most fully articulated plan for implementing such a strategy. The report's release stimulated much discussion, because of the AUTHOR'S claims that selective incapacitation could simultaneously reduce crime rates and prison populations. Ethical problems inherent in such proposals as well as methodological inconsistencies in the original research warrant a reexamination of the proposal and of the empirical basis for the conclusions offered therein. Greenwood and Abrahamse's original research is replicated with a representative sample of California state prison inmates (N = 2, 188) in light of these limitations, with specific focus on the methodological issues concerning the construction of the predictive scale. The selective incapacitation scheme advocated by Greenwood and Abrahamse performs extremely poorly in terms of both reliability and validity, thus precluding the implementation of such schemes. The article contains a discussion of other, more ethically acceptable uses of an instrument that identifies “high-rate” or “dangerous” offenders. In conclusion, some observations on the limitations of incarceration-based strategies of crime control are offered.     

SELECTIVE INCAPACITATION,THREE STRIKES,AND THE PROBLEM OF AGING PRISON POPULATIONS: USING SIMULATION MODELING TO SEE THE FUTURE*

Research Summary: The growth of prison populations over the last three decades is a great source of concern for policy makers and observers. One mechanism by which this growth occurs is via sentencing reforms that extend length of stay for certain categories of offenders. This has the effect of aging prison populations, which is problematic for many reasons. Apart from the increased financial burdens entailed in caring for older prisoners, it is also important to consider the intent of reforms in evaluating them. Of late, sentencing reform has become increasingly focused on the selective incapacitation of dangerous offenders. Policies that have the effect of aging the prison population are problematic from this perspective due to the diminishing returns realized with respect to incapacitation as offenders age. Dynamic systems simulation analysis is employed to investigate the likely consequences of recent sentencing reforms that increase length of stay for some offenders. These analyses indicate that the effects of recent reforms may not be as dramatic as some observers have predicted, but they suggest that the consideration of alternatives to incarceration for elderly offenders is warranted from the standpoint of cost considerations as well as that of selective incapacitation. Policy Implications: The results indicate that California's Three Strikes law will not accelerate the rate of growth of the elderly prison population. However, even without increasing the proportional representation of elderly prisoners, the number of elderly prisoners is expected to grow substantially over the next three decades. These prisoners will strain criminal justice system resources while presenting little public safety threat. State criminal justice policy makers and their constituents should closely examine laws that impose very long stays without discretionary release, as these statutes may contribute to the production of elderly prisoners. This problem is particularly pronounced in Three Strikes and other habitual offender laws that use retrospective methods to identify habitual offenders. Additionally, the effects of reforms lengthening stay for some offenders must be considered in light of cumulative effects of sentencing reform resulting in changes to the demographic structure of the prison population overall. Dynamic systems simulation modeling is presented as a valuable policy‐making tool, as it allows the policy analyst to examine the potential impacts of laws in the absence of data suitable for conventional statistical analyses.     

业务过失犯罪处罚问题研究

科学技术的发展在给人类带来巨大的福祉的同时,也使得生产、交通、建筑等高风险领域中过失犯罪的发生率持续上升。为保障社会安全,适应惩治和防范业务过失犯罪的需要,应加重我国刑法对业务过失犯罪的处罚,彻底改变刑法对该类犯罪的处罚轻于普通过失犯罪的普遍现象;适当增加业务过失危险犯;改变多数业务过失犯罪法定刑刑种设置的单一性,增设罚金刑和资格刑。     

Free radical production from controlled low-energy fires: toxicity considerations

Most fire departments respond within the first 5 min of notification of a fire. If fire victims are found at that stage by the firefighters, then incapacitation or death has occurred during the initial low-energy phase where smoke is being produced. Studies have shown that during this initial low-energy phase of the fire, gases commonly thought responsible for incapacitation or death are frequently not present in concentrations adequate to cause this result. In the current study free radicals, measured by electron spin resonance spectroscopy, were trapped in concentrations that we consider incapacitating, thus providing an explanation for "incapacitation without cause." This finding points the way to the design of more efficient temporary protective equipment for those who are in a high fire hazard environment, such as airline passengers, and suggests the idea of establishing a thermodynamic marker for the relative toxicity of building materials.