| Ulrich Beck, the famous sociologist from German, published a book named Risk Society in the year of 1986, in which Beck advanced the theory of risk society. Those devastating global risks talked by the theory of risk society are specific. There are some typical paradigms of risk can be confirmed now, which are the nuclear risk, the genetic risk, toxic substances, the financial crisis and terrorism. They have essential differences from those traditional risks as traffic accidents and mine accidents. Simply speaking, they can not be controlled effectively in the industrial society. On the contrary, they will become more and more serious under the traditional logic of risk control. We can not eradicate those risks completely, and some residual risks must exist. Residual risks can be tolerated in the field of traffic or mining, but they can not be tolerated in the field of nuclear, gene, and biochemistry.Once advanced, the theory of risk society got responses from many fields, such as anthropology, sociology, and science of law. In order to resolve the crisis of risk society, criminal law scholars from German firstly advanced the theory of risk criminal law. Recent years, domestic scholars also advanced the theory of risk criminal law, which is different from the former. However, the domestic theory of risk criminal law wrests the theory of risk society, especially the true meaning of risk. It confuses the risks of traditional society with those of risk society. In fact, what the theory of risk criminal law wants to resolve are still the risks of traditional society, so it has no reason to subvert the basic principles of traditional criminal law. The risks of risk society have four characteristics. They are global, unknown, systematic and double-faced, which conflict with the essence of the criminal law. In the classical industrial society, those risks are defined as the potential side effects of modernization, which can not be resolved by the criminal law of classical industrial society. In order to defuse the crisis of risk society, we have to take systematic measures. First of all, science and politics must rethink themselves. Faced with the crisis of risk society, criminal law should not be negative or radical. The proper standpoint should be reflective. |
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