The Influence of Quantitative Factors for Constituting A Crime on The Amounts of Burglaries and Pickpocketing Acts

An Empirical Study Taking H Province in China as An Example

Abstract

It is a characteristic of Chinese criminal law to stipulate the criminal quantitative factors in the constitutive elements of a crime. <The Amendment to the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China (VIII)>, which came into effect on May 1,2011, abolished the criminal quantitative factors of the theft with a weapon ,the burglary and the pick-pocketing which would be considered to be a larceny. The empirical investigation in H Province of China shows that after the implementation of <The Amendment to the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China (VIII)>, the number of larceny cases filed by policemen first increased and then decreased; the proportion of larcenies in criminal cases increased first and then gradually decreased. In contrast, without the cancellation of the criminal quantitative factors, the caseload of the crime of fraud and its proportion in criminal cases increased year by year. The investigation of citizens and police officers in H Province shows that compared with the six years before 2011, the citizens and police officers believed that burglaries and the pick-pocketing acts had decreased in the the six years after 2011.The number one reason for the decrease in burglary is the increased number of cameras.The primary reason for the decline in pick-pocketing is the electronic money.That the burglary and the pick-pocketing without explicit criminal quantitative factors are considered to be larcenies also plays a positive role in reducing burglaries and the pick-pocketing acts. An investigation of four prisons in H province in China showed that the crime circle expanded for theft in 2011, leading to no increase in the number of thieves in the four prisons. On the contrary, the number of fraudsters without expanding the criminal circle of fraud increased year by year in the three male prisons in H province, and the number of fraudsters decreased year by year in a female prison.