How to help "young you" find the lost world
□ Our reporter Zhu Ningning
"Who said that what is lost is lost forever? Who said there is no longer sincere love? Life is like this, there is joy and sorrow..." This is the theme song of the sensational TV series "Looking for the World Back" in the 1980s. Many People are still impressed by this drama.
The play tells the story of a work-study school in a northern city in the 1980s, and it touches on the education and correction of students in the work-study school. Nowadays, work-study schools have long since withdrawn from the stage of history due to various reasons. They are replaced by specialized schools and specialized education. The social efforts to help criminal minors are still continuing.
In recent years, incidents of violent crimes by young minors and school bullying have repeatedly appeared in the newspapers. The "White Paper on Juvenile Procuratorial Work (2014-2019)" issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on June 1 this year disclosed that the number of juvenile crimes has rebounded after years of decline and stabilized, and the number of crimes against juveniles has increased. situation.
Not long ago, the revised draft of the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency was once again submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for deliberation. This is the second time the draft has appeared since it was first submitted for deliberation in October 2019. The core of this revision is to design targeted education, correction, and punishment measures on the basis of scientific classification of juvenile crimes and wrongdoings, forming a complete hierarchical treatment mechanism.
It is worth noting that the second review draft clarified the legal status of specialized education for the first time, stipulating that the state should strengthen the construction of specialized schools and provide specialized education to minors who have serious bad behaviors. Specialized education is an integral part of the national education system and an important protective measure to educate and rectify minors with serious bad behaviors. The provincial people's government shall incorporate the construction of specialized schools into the overall plan for economic and social development. Local people's governments at or above the county level set up special education steering committees, and special schools are set up reasonably according to needs.
These new regulations have aroused great social concern. Many people in the industry believe that this is a manifestation of criticizing the legalization of education and the scientization of education correction, which will help solve the problem of incomplete and unsustainable education correction. At the same time, some viewpoints further proposed that specialized education must have a set of scientific and reasonable system design. Judging from the current content of the draft, it lacks specific and clear regulations and still needs to be improved to promote the effective function of specialized education.
Specialized education is shrinking
Specialized education is an important front for preventing juvenile delinquency and an important means of implementing effective education and correction. To prevent juvenile delinquency, specialized education and the development of specialized schools are an important part of it.
Chen Haiyi, deputy to the National People's Congress and head of the Juvenile Family Tribunal of the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, was called "the judge's mother." Chen Haiyi, who has been engaged in juvenile trials for more than 20 years, has contacted thousands of "problem children." In her view, the lack of specialized education is an important reason that directly leads to the continuous emergence of many vicious crimes among young minors.
"At present, there are still many unreasonable places in my country's special education." Chen Haiyi said. The performance is as follows: First, the coverage rate of specialized schools is not high. According to statistics, there are currently 100 specialized schools nationwide, mainly in Guizhou, Shanghai, Sichuan, Liaoning and other provinces and cities. They are unevenly distributed, and even some areas have not yet established specialized schools. Specialized education has not kept up with the development of the times, whether it is in the school-running mode or the educational method, and cannot meet the actual needs, so it is showing a state of shrinking. Secondly, the faculty of specialized schools is very limited. At this stage, specialized schools are mainly for students in the compulsory education stage, and they do not have the realistic conditions for separate corrections of young minors who commit serious violent crimes in separate classes.
In addition, the compulsory correction capabilities of specialized schools are also very limited. "Compared with children studying in specialized schools, young minors involved in crimes are more serious in correction difficulties, vices, emotional recurrences, and family conditions. Special schools do not have the ability and conditions for compulsory correction. Especially specialized schools It is difficult for schools to coordinate and initiate accountability, supervision and parental education corrections for the parents and other guardians of young minors involved in crimes, coordination and assistance to relevant government departments, including education departments, human resources and social departments, and communities, and commissions from social organizations. There is also no authority and lack of conditions for administrative coordination." Chen Haiyi said.
How to rectify the crime of young minors
It is understood that, at present, for minors under 16 years of age who are not subject to criminal penalties (eight categories of serious crimes are not subject to criminal penalties under 14 years of age), the main methods of correction are in addition to ordering parents or guardians to discipline and government custody and education as clearly stipulated in the Criminal Law. There is no other statutory treatment. However, after some young minors commit bad behaviors or even commit crimes, if they are not properly rectified and interfered, they will even go further and further down the road of crimes, with the nature of the crime and the consequences of the crime becoming more and more serious.
How to effectively rectify these children and whether they can be transformed into harmless people is not only the key difficulty in preventing and controlling juvenile crimes, but also the most concerned issue of the law on the prevention of juvenile crimes under revision.
"The core problem now is that the law does not have strong enough measures for these children and cannot fully reflect the authority of the law." Yuan Ningning, executive deputy director of the Juvenile Affairs Governance and Law Research Base of China University of Political Science and Law, pointed out that from the world From the experience of various countries including the judicial practice exploration in China in recent years, a universal law for treating juvenile delinquency or preventing juvenile delinquency is to construct a set of scientific and reasonable hierarchical interventions for juveniles’ unusual behaviors. System and take measures at different levels.
Yuan Ningning believes that high-intensity correction methods that restrict personal freedom must be adopted for children who have already experienced serious mental behavior deviations. And specialized education cannot effectively deal with minors who have serious violent behaviors at a young age. "Ordinary vocational schools are not competent in terms of management measures or corrective power. Even if the so-called branch campuses and class divisions are carried out, such corrections that restrict personal freedom cannot be achieved."
In addition, he emphasized that the psychological treatment of young minors with severe violent behavior must have a certain period of time based on scientific evaluation. It is recommended to adopt the method of "standard time limit + flexible time limit", that is, when deciding on detention and rehabilitation or adopting similar measures, a time limit is determined on the basis of psychological behavior assessment. Within the basic time limit, it can be appropriately extended or shortened according to the correction situation. To achieve the purpose of preventing re-offending.
Special education still needs scientific and reasonable design
It is worth noting that the second review of the draft no longer uses the concept of "custody and upbringing", but incorporates relevant measures into specialized education. Article 45 of the second-review draft stipulates that: if a minor has an act specified in the criminal law and is not subject to criminal punishment because he is under the age of legal criminal responsibility, the public security organ may decide to send him to a specialized school after evaluation by the Special Education Steering Committee. Specialized education. The people's government at the provincial level shall, in light of the actual local conditions, determine at least one specialized school to set up a special place in accordance with the branch campus, class division, etc., to provide corrective education to the minors specified in the preceding paragraph. The special places specified in the preceding paragraph shall be strictly managed, and the judicial administration, public security and other departments shall provide assistance.
This provision of the draft has triggered some different opinions.
In Yuan Ningning's view, a major problem with the current draft is that the regulations are not clear enough. "For example, what exactly is'strict management'? To what extent does it need to be strict? Should personal freedom be restricted? Can I go home on Saturdays, Sundays, and other holidays? Another example is that the judicial administration, public security and other departments should provide assistance, but how to assist It can be said that the current provisions of the draft are relatively vague, and this ambiguity will cause the system to be either abused or emptied in practice." Yuan Ningning said.
"The prerequisite for this specific specialized education is that the minor has committed a criminal act stipulated by the Criminal Law, but has it committed a criminal act? Is the criminal offence minor and does not require this specific specialized education? Is there a statutory mitigation and mitigation of the circumstances How long should this specific education be given? If it is simply stipulated by the public security organs without checks and balances of power or guarantees of procedures, it will be difficult to avoid abuse of power and to protect the legality of these young minors. Rights." Tong Lihua, director of the Beijing Youth Legal Aid and Research Center, believes that the vocational schools mainly deal with minors who have serious bad behaviors, such as gang fights, insulting others, etc., but the custody and upbringing faces committing criminal acts. However, minors who are under the age of criminal responsibility will not be punished, such as murder, rape, robbery, etc. There are essential differences between the two types of people in subjective malignancy, degree of behavioral harm, education and correction measures. If the "big pot" approach of a specialized education system is used, not only is it not a refined classification and prevention, but also obliterates the efforts of specialized schools to downplay its "bad boy" label in recent years, and it will easily cause the two types of people to infect each other. Bringing difficulties and risks to school management, etc., parents are even less willing to send minors with serious bad behaviors to specialized schools.
In view of this, Tong Lihua suggested to design two different systems for minors with serious bad behaviors and minors involved in crimes at a young age: specialized education and compulsory education. Special education is undertaken by the administrative department of education, mainly to rectify minors who have serious bad behaviors. It is decided by the administrative department of education and cooperated by the judicial organs; compulsory education is undertaken by the administrative department of justice, and the public security organs Minors who are not under the age of criminal responsibility submit their opinions, and the procuratorial organs will decide whether to transfer them to the people’s court, whether to send them to compulsory education, and the length of the period determined by the people’s court after review.
Special education measures should be more specific
It is worth noting that in the group deliberations on the second review of the draft, some members of the Standing Committee also emphasized the need to make systematic and specific regulations for specialized education that meet actual and practical needs.
"In fact, specialized education has established a new system that incorporates the original discipline, correction, and upbringing. Since it is proposed as a new system, there must be a complete system design." Committee member Li Peilin believes that the draft is currently It is not enough to define specialized education as an integral part of the education system. The education department cannot perform the function of correcting and preventing crime. It is recommended to amend it to "Special education is an integral part of the national education system and social governance system" to facilitate justice and public security. Wait for the department to intervene.
Member Guo Zhenhua hopes to continue to conduct research on the special education system, with more specific regulations, including the composition of the special education steering committee, evaluation procedures, and related relief systems, as well as correction education measures in special education schools. "If it cannot be clearly stipulated in the law, the administrative agency should also be authorized or required to formulate administrative regulations in this area." Guo Zhenhua said.