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Law expert urges lesser punishment to migrant workers

By Coldness Kwan (Chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-10-13 16:17

People belonging to disadvantaged groups like migrant workers who commit first non-serious offences should be given lesser punishment, said Renmin University of China law school professor Huang Jingping at the 2006 National Annual Conference on Criminal Law in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Workers' Daily reported.

Huang expressed his opinion in a discussion focusing on the compatibility of rigidity and tolerance at the forum held from October 11 to 15, 2006.

This flexibility in sentencing would cater only to special groups of people such as minors, the professor explained. He further stated that punishment for migrant workers especially should be flexible, to help ease the exacerbated social contradictions that formed during China's reform and opening up.

The law should go easy on first time offenders of non-serious offences and avoid arresting, prosecuting or sentencing them unless absolutely necessary, Huang said.

Huang said that crimes committed by migrant workers contribute a high percentage of increasing number of crimes overall. But, Huang says, the situation migrant workers find themselves in may offer mitigating circumstances that should be taken into consideration when deciding appropriate punishments. For example, some migrant workers may steal money because their own was stolen or their employers are behind in the promised pay schedule. Many migrant workers live in unfamiliar places, where they have no one to turn to if they encounter problems.

Other experts claimed that migrant workers, who are far from their hometowns, are easily sexually frustrated and resort to rape.

Other reports said workers complained that they had nothing to do in their spare time in the strange places where they work and they feel life is boring.

Huang refuted arguments that lesser punishment for migrant workers would invite legal inequality. On the contrary, he argued, it is equal to give migrant workers lesser punishments because they commit crimes as a result of institutional problems. Literal legal equality would see the unequal treatment of disadvantaged groups in the name of state power.

Tolerance, however, does not mean ignoring offences entirely. Huang explained. The law should fill the disadvantaged person who committed a non-serious first offence with awe, and then show him/her tolerance. According to Huang, this is surely conducive to the promotion of criminal policy and the establishment of a harmonious society at large.