The Meaning and Improvement of Rehousing Education as a Countermeasure to Terrorist Crimes in China

Abstract

In order to effectively regulate terrorist crimes, China enacted the Anti-Terrorism Law in 2015,and Article 30 of the Law stipulates Rehousing education measures. Rehousing education is a preventive measure applied to offenders who have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment or longer for terrorism or extremism offences and are deemed to be dangerous before their sentences expire and they are released. The introduction of these measures not only signalled China's strong control stance on terrorist crimes, but also demonstrated a range of options for dealing with terrorist crimes in the new era. In addition, the nature of terrorist crimes has raised questions about the effectiveness of crime prevention through punishment, so it has accepted the idea that it is necessary to regulate terrorist crimes through criminal means other than punishment, which is a result of the current globally accepted criminal policy. However, at present, China does not provide for a superordinate concept of “security measure”, and the resulting of Rehousing educationn is also Insufficient clarity, thus giving rise to much debate. In addition, in terms of the formal conditions of application, the provisions of the law did not take into account the dangerousness of reoffending by the offender, and in terms of the substantive conditions of application, the law did not provide adequate criteria for dangerousness assessment. In particular, Rehousing education is provided for in the Anti-Terrorism Law, which is an administrative law, The assessment of dangerousness is not made at the time of conviction, but rather a separate post- conviction assessment by the court. In this way, Rehousing education is actually operating independently of the criminal justice system. The procedural provisions do not clearly stipulate the timing, duration and content of the dangerousness assessment. Considering all of these, indicate that China's current system of Rehousing education has many deficiencies, which violate the principle of constitutional clarity and risk unjustifiable violations of the human rights of the accused. In this context, this article advocates for the integration of Rehousing education into the criminal justice system by integrating it with the security measures currently provided for in the Criminal Code. It also attempts to improve the formal and substantive conditions of application and the procedural and enforcement regulations of the education by focusing on the problems, and exploration of the legal basis of the Rehousing education is clarity and justified.