Author: Liu Renwen

Abstract: In order to give full play to the optimal effect of criminal law in promoting the modernization of the system of and capacity for governance, China needs to re-codify its criminal law in a timely manner on the basis of previous revisions to integrate the existing fragmented provisions on legal consequences of crimes and reconstruct them into a system with scientific structure, optimized institution, flexible mechanism and smooth operation. Therefore, under the guidance of the theory of distributive justice, part of the criminal punishment power monopolized by the state should be appropriately transferred to society and the offenders should be transformed from simple objects of punishment to objects of cooperation, so as to realize a reasonable distribution of rights and obligations of various types of subjects in the governance of crimes. Concretely speaking, it is necessary to build a framework for legal consequences of crimes based on the dual system of penalties and security measures and make provisions on the types of security measures and their application corresponding to the types of penalties and their application, to expand the types of penalties, adjust the content of main and additional penalties, and improve community and qualification penalties, and to establish a system of exchanging punishments, reverse the rigid mechanism for criminal law application, and integrate the execution of different types of penalties as well as the execution of penalties and security measures and realize their mutual complementation.

Key Words: codification, legal consequences of the crimes, penalty, security measures, exchanging punishments

Author: Liu Renwen, research fellow and head of the Criminal Law Department of CASS Institute of Law; professor and doctoral supervisor, Law School of the University of CASS.

Source: 5 (2023) Chinese Journal of Law.