Reflection and reconstruction of China,s criminal policy against organized crime： based on the interpretation of the legislative spirit of U.N. convention against transnational organized crime

Abstract

Since its founding, China has witnessed four stages of criminal policy adjustment against organized crime: the policy of combining suppression with leniency, the policy of combing punishment with leniency, the policy of severe punishment, and the policy of combining leniency with severe punishment. However, the effect of this sternness-oriented strategy is not so obvious in the practice against organized crime. The provisions of U.N. Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime demonstrates a distinctive spirit of criminal policy: combing priority for human rights protection with a relative balance; promoting both crime fighting and prevention while attaching greater importance to prevention; establishing the concept of organized crime in a broad sense based on diversified characteristics of organized crimes worldwide. At present, there are certain problems in our policy concept against organized crime: unclear orientation of controlling crime and protecting human rights; attaching greater importance to crime fighting than prevention, and taking criminal penalty as the only means to deal with organized crime; adopting narrow criminal concept in legislation; stern but not strict, not fully criminalized. Therefore, the following criminal policy should be established: strengthening both social defense and human rights protection, attaching equal importance to crime fighting and prevention, and establishing the concept of organized crime in a broad sense and regarding it as a special crime type different from general joint crime.