Zeitschrift für Zivil- und Rechtswissenschaften

Abstrakt

Forensic Error: Evidential Impacts of China’s Strike Hard Policy

Na Jiang

China’s Strike Hard Policy, a radical approach to fighting crime generally in effect from 1983 to 2005, produced significantly more wrongful convictions, including those resulting from forensic error. This conclusion is based on data that were collected from experiments conducted with 394 questionnaires and 100 judges in 4 sample cities, just before and after the SHP was replaced with a balanced policy in late 2005. Surveys to elicit the traits of forensic identification were used, as well as the exogenous imposition of the SHP to identify its evidential impacts, combined with new policy effects. The 2005 reform towards balancing leniency and severity is also essentially inadequate to prevent forensic errors.