| Quantity of crime, a subordinate legal terminology that applies to all complex criminal patterns, is different from typical single crime and typical plural crime. The primary task of the research into the theory of quantity of crime is to determinate whether a certain crime is a single crime or a plural one, and to reveal the essential characteristics and constituting elements of all kinds of complicated quantity of crime. The introduction of a systematic theory of quantity of crime is conducive not only to the perfection of criminal judicature, criminal legislation and criminal theory, but also to the prevention of repetitive evaluation of a single crime and the minimization of influx of judges’ subjective opinions, thus contribute to the realization of justice in criminal law. The theory of quantity of crime, which focuses its attention on problemes such as the determination of the number of crime and the application of penalty thereto, should adhere to the dualistic theory that integrate both the crime theory and penalty theory. With respect to the judging criteria of the quantity of crime, a clear distinction should be made between the criteria in a formal sense and the criteria in a legal appraisal sense. The former takes only the constituting elements of a crime into account, while the latter considers such principles as prosecution efficiency, balance between crime and penalty, etc. Generally speaking, according to the principle of balance between crime and penalty, single crime gets single penalty and plural crime get homologous penalties. But to realize substantive balance, plural crime may sometimes get only one penalty. The prosecution efficiency principle requires that, in some situations, the damage caused by the plural crime must be accumulated, and the criminal act will be judged as one crime pursuant to law. The quantity of crime has two basic features, including its plural and atypical elements in the constitution of a crime and the denial of cumulative punishment thereof. The quantity of crime should be divided into two categories, that is, quantity of crime in statutory pattern, such as combinative offense and aggregated consequential offense, etc., and quantity of crime in rewarding pattern, such as implicated offense and consecutive offense, etc. |
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