降低刑事责任年龄否定论

降低刑事责任年龄的提议主要立足于三个命题:“犯罪低龄化”现象严重,降低刑事责任年龄是解决“低龄犯罪人”问题的应然手段,低龄未成年人已具备相当的辨认、控制能力。通过对实证数据与相关论据的收集分析,前两个命题得到证伪,第三个命题无法证明,由此可以否定降低刑事责任年龄观点的合理性依据。从我国历史与近代刑事责任年龄设定的发展历程来看,调整年龄节点的主张从未停止,援用的理由相差无几,经历过多次变动与论证后延续至今,具备符合我国社会发展实践的合理性与稳定性。从我国的义务教育设置与年龄之间的对应关系出发,刑事责任年龄确定的基准点应以义务教育的结束为合理节点,采取“从高到低”的刑事责任年龄设定逻辑。综合上述理由,兼顾少年司法“教育为主、惩罚为辅”刑事政策导向,最终得出当前的刑事责任年龄设置合理,不需降低的结论。     

马航 MH17事件引发的国际法思考

2014年7月17日,马来西亚航空公司的一架客机在飞越乌克兰东部交战区域时被导弹击中坠毁,机组人员与乘客全部遇难。基于相关事实,认为根据现有国际条约,故意击落他国民航客机属于严重危害民用航空安全的犯罪行为,且违反了1949年《关于战时保护平民之日内瓦公约》的规定,构成了《国际刑事法院规约》中的“战争罪”。限于种种因素,国际刑事法院和国际法院很难对涉事的国家和个人实施管辖,但犯罪发生地国、航空器登记地国、罪犯藏匿地国乃至受害者国籍国等都可依普遍管辖权或其国内法的规定对本案实施管辖并对罪犯定罪量刑。     

网络犯罪对刑事侦查的挑战与应对

网络犯罪不仅包括以网络为对象的犯罪,也包括以网络为工具的犯罪。由于网络犯罪具有犯罪主体、手段的专业化、犯罪客体的多样化、犯罪行为的隐蔽化的特点,导致犯罪行为扩散迅速、身份易藏、证据有限、毁证容易、适用法律困难等问题,对刑事侦查带来了极大的挑战。这种挑战主要体现在管辖权、证据制度和侦查措施三个方面。我国应对网络犯罪的侦查制度较为落后,应当从专门侦查机构、管辖制度、电子数据收集制度和技术侦查措施四个方面来加以完善。     

Shall we follow the money? Anti-mafia policies and electoral competition

Building upon the evidence that the mafia increases the degree of vote concentration, we use data on regional elections in Sicily to estimate the impact of anti-mafia policies on electoral competition. We find robust evidence that the reassignment for social purposes of property and assets seized to the mafia reduces the degree of electoral concentration. This result supports the hypothesis that policies that create social value, such as the reallocation to social-driven organizations, are more effective than those targeted to public and political institutions.     

Justice involvement among homeless individuals with mental illnesses: Are self-report and administrative measures comparable?

Individuals with mental illnesses who experience homelessness have frequent interactions with the criminal justice system. Correctly measuring this involvement is essential to develop and evaluate the efficacy of intervention programs. Criminal justice involvement is typically assessed through administrative records or self-reported accounts. The aims of this study are to: 1) assess agreement between self-report and administrative data related to court appearances, and 2) identify individual characteristics that affect discrepancies between sources. Participants were 468 homeless persons with mental illness from the Montreal site of the At Home/Chez Soi randomized controlled trial, in Canada. Self-reported data was collected through an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Administrative data was collected through provincial and municipal court databases. Overall, agreement was good. Discrepancies were more common among those with a diagnosis of mood disorder with psychotic features, and those with a criminal history. Increased age and interviewer’s perception of sincerity and interest increased likelihood of concordance. Generally, high agreement between self-report and administrative data suggests that either source can provide reliable information. Further work to understand predictors of discrepancies could further enhance the quality of data collected through these different sources.     

The structure and vulnerability of a drug trafficking collaboration network

Prior research has established that collaboration networks exhibit heavy-tailed degree distributions, assortative degree mixing, and large clustering coefficients. Using court record data, we assess these properties in a collaboration network among heroin traffickers. Consistent with prior research, we find an exponential degree distribution and strong local clustering. However, the traffickers mix dissortatively by degree rather than assortatively. Using a graph sampling method, we show that a consequence of dissortative mixing is that targeted vertex removals have a greater impact on the connectivity and cohesion of the trafficking network. We also note the importance of degree mixing for characterizing and identifying topological weaknesses.     

Street Violence against Women in India: Mapping Prevention Strategies

Street violence against women (SVAW) in India is highly under researched. This article aims to understand the contextual factors responsible for the occurrence of SVAW in five cities of North‐east India: Agartala, Kohima, Imphal, Shillong, and Guwahati. The aftermath of an horrific gang rape and the subsequent death of a 23‐year‐old woman in a moving bus in New Delhi in December 2012 served as a wake‐up call for the Government of India (GOI), augmenting the need to understand the issues of SVAW. On December 23, 2012, the GOI constituted the Justice Verma Committee (JVC) who prepared a 630‐page report, submitted to the Prime Minister of India, which identified “failure of governance” as the central cause of SVAW. Based on some of the recommendations of the JVC report, the GOI passed the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2013. Drawing upon semi‐structured interviews from qualitative research in combination with a questionnaire survey, this research aims to understand the factors that allow SVAW to persist. Using recommendations of the JVC report and the Justice Usha Mehra Commission, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013 , as well as research findings, this article is an attempt to inform prevention strategies aimed at escalating the safety of women in public spaces of the study region.     

论《刑事诉讼法修正案(草案)》对我国民主法制建设的新贡献

法律有稳定性,但是适应时代发展进行修改也十分重要。我国刑事诉讼法自1997年实施以来已经过了15个年头,一些制度、程序已经无法适用当今司法实践的需要。2011年8月30日,全国人大公布的刑事诉讼法修正案的草案。草案在维护公平正义、保障人权、维护程序正义三方面对我国民主法制建设有着新的贡献。     

浅析我国死刑制度改革——以刑法修正案（八）草案为例

死刑作为对犯罪分子最严厉的处罚,在我国的刑事法治中一直处于独特的地位。但我国死刑制度罪名过多,涉及面过宽,已经不符合社会发展的需要。根据我国当前发展的实际情况,刑法修正案（八）删去了经济型的非暴力的犯罪的死刑罪名,严格限制死刑适用对象,从而提高了我国的人权状况,顺应了时代发展和国际潮流,使我国死刑制度更趋完善,有效地推动了我国司法制度的改革。     

十三篇《刑法志》的儒家情节

通过对正史中十三篇《刑法志》的研究，揭示出其中隐含的儒家价值情节，具体而言表现于四方面：一是十三篇《刑法志》中大量引用儒家经典和儒家学者的言论；二是儒家“德主刑辅”的德刑观贯穿于十三篇《刑法志》的始终；三是十三篇《刑法志》依循于儒家亲亲尊尊的伦理原则；四是十三篇《刑法志》均秉持儒家价值理想以批判现实和历史。