Abstract: Subjecting punishments involving deprival of liberty to judicial decision is necessary to guaranteelegal rights of the punished and ensure the fairness of justice through institutional mechanism,required by international human rights conventions, as well as a common practice of international community.Administration detention in China, as a penalty involving the deprivation of citizens’ liberty, should be judicialized. As for specific approach, incorporating it into criminal law system would be a wise choice. Meanwhile, importance shall be attached to supporting measures.For example,China should reduce the minimum term of criminal detention from one month to one day to fill in the gap of impris¬onment of less than one month resulted from massive increase of petty offences,establish systems that substitute imprisonment with criminal fines or community services to minimize the disadvantages of short-term imprisonment as much as possible,further optimize crime filtration and diversion mechanisms and summary procedures in criminal proceedings to limit the scope of criminalization and increase judicial efficiency,and decrease the severity of collateral punitive con¬sequences in petty offence cases by,for example,providing for the system of elimination of criminal re-cord.As the systematic requirements of development of criminal rule of law in China,these measures become more necessary than ever after administration detention is incorporated into criminal law.

Keywords:administrative detention; judicialization; criminal law system; supporting measures

Author:Liu Renwen, research fellow, doctoral supervisor and head of Criminal Law Department, CASS Law Institute.

Source: 5 (2021) Law and Social Development.