China News Agency, Beijing, June 3 (Reporter Zhang Su) From June 1, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate released data on procuratorial work for two consecutive days, reflecting the protection gap for minors.
One is the "White Paper on Minor Prosecution (2014-2019)", which pointed out that the number of crimes against minors is on the rise, and the number of minor crimes has rebounded after falling for many years and tending to stabilize. From 2017 to 2019, the prosecution approved a total of 33,790, 40005, and 47,563 arrests against minors, with a year-on-year growth of more than 18% in 2018 and 2019. During these five years, the prosecution prosecuted a total of 292,988 juvenile criminal suspects.
The other is the main case data of the national procuratorate in 2019. The non-catch rate for underage criminal suspects is 34.4% and the non-prosecution rate is 24.3%, which is 12 percentage points and 14.8 percentage points higher than the overall criminal arrest rate. However, when it is refined to various places, there are imbalances and inadequacies.
In the recent period, from the "Heilongjiang child abuse case" to "Qingdao female lawyer killed, 15-year-old daughter involved in the case", whether it is a crime that violates the rights and interests of minors or a crime committed by minors, has caused a lot of concerns.
According to Tong Lihua, director of the Beijing Youth Legal Aid and Research Center, in recent years, the state has stepped up efforts to protect minors and adopted a large number of effective measures. For example, in 2013, multiple departments jointly issued the "Opinions on Punishing Sexual Assaults against Minors in Accordance with the Law", which set forth specific requirements for the timely and effective handling of crimes against minors. As another example, the reform of the highest prosecution internal institution in 2019, and the addition of a ninth prosecution office specializing in the prosecution of minors, marked a major development in China's juvenile justice system and judicial reform.
The more representative “protecting seedlings” with the law is the revised draft of the Law on the Protection of Minors and the revised draft of the Law on the Prevention of Minor Crimes which were submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for consideration in October 2019. Compared with the current law on the protection of minors, the former has nearly doubled the provisions and added two chapters of "network protection" and "government protection"; the latter has taken into account the new situation and new features of minors’ crimes. Bizarre behavior is divided into three levels: bad behavior, serious bad behavior and criminal behavior, and the corresponding intervention or corrective measures are prescribed respectively.
However, Tong Lihua believes that the current situation of China’s weak protection base for minors has not been fundamentally reversed. He summed up three "lacks": first, the insufficient coordination of the protection of the rights and interests of minors, and it is likely that the situation of "Kowloon governing the water and working independently" will occur; second, the implementation of relevant legal policies at the grassroots level is not satisfactory; third It is lack of professional strength. "At present, the protection of minors in China still mainly depends on public officials."
Tong Xiaojun, director of the Juvenile and Child Research Center of the School of Political Science and Law, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also analyzed the above data and said that the number of minors gathering in quarrels, provoking troubles, and raping crimes has increased, reflecting the need to improve social governance. The violent characteristics of crimes against minors have become more and more obvious. The problems of adult co-opting and persuading minors to participate in underworld crimes are relatively prominent. It also reflects the need to increase the punishment of adults who commit crimes.
During the two sessions of China this year, NPC deputies and members of the CPPCC National Committee submitted numerous suggestions and proposals on the protection of minors’ rights and interests, "establishing an education system for minors to prevent sexual assault" and "strengthening legal education to support minors' growth" The umbrellas "", "vigorously cultivate social organizations to prevent juvenile delinquency," and "reduction of the minimum age of criminal responsibility" and other topics have attracted widespread attention.
Today, the judiciary has taken new measures to protect the "youth of the youth". On June 1st International Children's Day, the Supreme People's Court of China used a network platform and virtual reality technology to conduct a full media live broadcast of an infringement case heard by the Beijing Internet Court, inviting children to visit and listen online. Chen Haiyi, the “judge mother” who has helped more than 300 underage minors return to school, and the head of the Juvenile Family Trial Division of the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Guangdong Province, said that this will guide children from a young age to root the concept of the rule of law.
Procurator General Zhang Jun of China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate said at the opening day of online prosecution for minors that the procuratorate will implement the Party Central Committee’s strategic task of protecting the healthy growth of juveniles and children through prosecution and fulfillment of duties. “The more special times, The more we need to give minors more care, the more we need to gather social forces to protect minors and prevent minors from committing crimes."
Recently, nine departments including the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the National Supervisory Commission, and the Ministry of Education have jointly established a mandatory reporting system for cases of violations of minors, which provides for the violations of nine types of minors, including sexual assault, abuse, bullying, abandonment, and trafficking. And individuals must report the case immediately. Scholars commented that this demonstrates the top-level design of mandatory reports in the handling of cases of violations of minors, and establishes a "firewall" for minors.
In the Scouting concept, a minor protection system for child injury prevention, reporting and response centered on national guardianship should also be established. The system will consist of community children's homes, minor protection centers above the county level and child welfare agencies above the county level, forming a complete closed loop for effective protection of minors. (Finish)