Miscarriages of Justice and the Construction of Criminality in the People’s Republic of China

Another high-profile miscarriage of justice was reported recently by the media in China, highlighting widespread issues concerning torture and other police malpractices within the Chinese criminal justice system. Drawing from analysis in my book on the Construction of Guilt in China, this Note outlines the key drawbacks of the Chinese criminal process which contribute to wrongful convictions, namely that none of the legal institutions exhibits the autonomy to check the credibility of the evidence impartially. Alongside the problems caused by miscarriages of justice, they are also indicative of the symptoms of a weak criminal justice system, thereby opening up opportunities for future reforms. Keywords: miscarriages of justice; China; criminal justice; case construction.

Gendered Justice in China: Victim–Offender Mediation as the “Different Voice” of Female Judges

Attempts to uncover the “different voice” of female judges through testing the statistical significance of judges’ gender in decision making have offered inconsistent results. Meanwhile, a proliferation of research suggests that such “voice” might be detected through qualitative analysis. Existing findings indicate that when female judges have discretionary power regarding case management, they will typically foster a process of settlement. Based on this information, I conducted eight months of fieldwork in China and observed 68 victim–offender mediations in four district courts. I found that the criminal division is widely perceived as a masculine setting, and female judges are accustomed to employing mediation as a preferred dispute resolution method to facilitate reconciliation between the two parties and seek civil compensation for victims. Such judicial behavior is a result of propaganda from the Supreme People’s Court and a reflection of female judges’ life and work experience. By contrast, a neglect of mediation among male judges can be identified in the same workplace. The belief that mediation is feminine and time-consuming contributes to this neglect. In addition, rape lawsuits are an exception for mediation. This explorative research not only represents one of the first efforts to reveal a “different voice” in the Chinese criminal justice system but points out a direction of research for studying the judicial behaviors of female judges worldwide.

A Path to Standardizing Material Evidence Collection in Chinese Criminal Justice

An analysis of detailed police dossiers and participant interviews in two urban districts reveals that, in the field of criminal justice in China, the process of collection, circulation, and disposal of material evidence has been highly problematic. Even though the process appears to adhere to a legal framework most of the time, its failures can be readily seen in the absence or violation of norms. For example, procedures have routinely been mixed together or invented; the use of warrants has been limited or avoided; the approval process has frequently been circumvented; the management of the criminal property has been slipshod. Exploring the structural contradictions of the evidence collection process and the behavior of police officers and their motivations can help clarify the factors that shape the process as it exists today, the presence or absence of norms that guide evidence collection behavior, and the mechanisms that govern the actual practices of evidence collection. The current dominant approach to reforms in this field is legal transplantation. However, this approach may fail to respond to local practices or may fail to take into account participants’ mentalities. In order to find norms that are suitable for China’s circumstances, future standardization reforms of material evidence collection should take both transplanted experience and actual operations into consideration.

The 1983 Strike-Hard Campaign in China: a Moral Panic?

Though more than three decades have passed since the launch of Strike Hard in 1983, its impact on crimes remains. Most of the literature on the campaign so far has been theoretically and methodologically limited. Using historical materials and interview data, this paper establishes an integrated theoretical framework and aims at investigating whether and how a moral panic was constructed. This study argues that the top leader played a decisive role in engineering the moral panic during the 1983 Strike Hard operated through a top-down approach under the Chinese political structure. In short, exploring events from the perspective of moral panic, this study gives a deep insight into the Chinese criminal justice system in response to crimes.