Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law

The principal goal of the project is to analyse the links that exist between public opinion, criminal policy, legislation and legal practice, and to initiate attitudinal changes amongst political and legal actors as well as the public at large. A further objective is to guide Chinese criminal law reform, particularly with regard to a possible reduction in the number of capital offences, against the background of the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The main components of the project include:

• the surveying of population and occupational groups with regards to the death penalty,
• public lectures and debates concerning the death penalty at six Chinese universities,
• workshops, which will, above all, include members of the legislature and the judiciary,
• the establishment of a Chinese website, which will present in an accessible fashion the academic research carried out into the death penalty,
• empirical investigations of death penalty cases, in which miscarriages of justice are to be contrasted with “definite” death penalty convictions,
• a seminar consisting of high-ranking political and judicial officials entitled the "International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Death Penalty,”
• a compilation of suggested death penalty reforms which will be submitted to the National People’s Congress,
• the creation of a permanent Death Penalty Research Institute at the Beijing Normal University.

The public opinion surveys, as well as the interviews with criminal judges, public prosecutors and defence counsels, are to be planned and carried out by the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in cooperation with the University of Wuhan, Faculty of Law. This research is to be carried out in conjunction with an investigation being conducted by Shenghui Qi concerning the death penalty and public opinion – an investigation that will survey Chinese and American students presently studying at universities in Germany. The results of these empirical surveys and the attitudes they display will be used to formulate seminars which are to be put on for political and judicial actors. The results will also be integrated into the planned vocational training programmes. Moreover, the results of the surveys will flow into the creation of a comprehensive research report containing a series of suggested reforms, both of which are to be presented to the Legislative Commission of the National People’s Congress. Lastly, the results will also be incorporated to form the basis of a closing conference on the issues at hand.

The project began in March 2007 with a seminar presentation at the Irish Centre for Human Rights.