Although it can't be released immediately, it will also create opportunities for prisoners to get out of prison as soon as possible. China's criminal law regards whether criminals repent or perform meritorious service as one of the most fundamental substantive elements of commutation. If criminals are actively reformed and praised in prison, they can be released from prison as soon as possible through commutation.
? The following are the relevant legal provisions for your reference:
? According to Article 78 of the Criminal Law, commutation can be divided into commutation and non-commutation. The objects and restrictions of commutation are the same as commutation, but the substantive conditions are different. To apply commutation to criminals, the following conditions must be met:
? 1. Commutation is only applicable to criminals sentenced to public surveillance, criminal detention, fixed-term imprisonment or life imprisonment. Criminals sentenced to one of the above four punishments, whether their crimes are intentional or negligent, felony or misdemeanor, crime of endangering national security or other criminal crimes, can reduce their sentences as long as they have the statutory conditions for reducing their sentences.
2. Commutation can only be applied to specific objects. According to Article 78 of China's Criminal Law, commutation applies to criminals sentenced to public surveillance, criminal detention, fixed-term imprisonment or life imprisonment. Public surveillance, criminal detention, fixed-term imprisonment and life imprisonment here all belong to the category of free punishment. Among them, control is the punishment of restricting freedom; Criminal detention, fixed-term imprisonment and life imprisonment are all deprivation of liberty. It can be seen that commutation in China's criminal law mainly refers to shortening the execution period of free punishment, which is different from other commutation systems in penalty execution.
The substantive conditions of commutation vary according to the type of commutation.
The essential condition for "being able to" reduce the sentence is that the prisoner earnestly abides by the prison regulations, accepts education and reform, and does repent or perform meritorious service during the execution of the penalty. Generally speaking, criminals' repentance and meritorious service in prison are unified. However, some criminals show repentance without meritorious service, or have meritorious service without outstanding repentance. According to the criminal law, repentance or meritorious service are conditions for commutation. As long as a criminal has one of them, his sentence can be reduced. Of course, if you have both repentance and meritorious service, you can give a larger commutation within the statutory commutation limit.
? The essential conditions of commutation refer to the essential conditions that the law must have for criminals to commute their sentences. Only when this condition is met can the sentence be reduced. According to the provisions of China's criminal law, commutation can only be applied to criminals who do repent or make meritorious deeds during the execution of punishment. This is a basic element of the application of commutation. The reason why it is called substantive requirement is determined by the purpose and purpose of commutation in China. The purpose of applying commutation in socialist countries is to affirm the reform achievements of criminals, encourage them to continue their efforts to reform, and gradually reduce or even eliminate the subjective malignancy of criminals so that they will no longer endanger society. Whether the subjective viciousness of criminals is reduced or even eliminated depends on whether the criminals repent or perform meritorious service in the process of penalty execution.
? Therefore, China's criminal law only regards whether the criminal has repented or rendered meritorious service as the most fundamental substantive element of commutation. Chinese scholars also refer to this condition as subjective condition, pointing out that criminals must truly repent or perform meritorious service during the execution of punishment, which is the subjective condition for commutation. Judging from the legislative purpose of commutation system, commutation itself aims to use the authoritative power of penalty evaluation means to affirm the reform achievements of criminals, guide and motivate them to continue their efforts, and at the same time spur other criminals through the power of example to promote the common progress of all prisoners. This formulation of subjective conditions shows that repentance is the reduction of subjective malignancy of criminals, which has certain basis. However, repentance and meritorious service are both objective manifestations of criminals, which are called subjective conditions and are easy to be misunderstood. To this end, we tend to take repentance or meritorious service required by law as the substantive condition of commutation.