Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 10, 2021

Crime Statistics and Optimizing Crime Governance

(Abstract)

Lu Jianping

Improving crime governance systems and enhancing their efficiency are important ways to advance the modernization of China’s governance system and governance capacity. Statistical data on crime demonstrate the results of crime governance. They serve as an important tool to observe and quantify crime phenomena and constitute the fundamental basis for judging the performance of crime governance. Statistical analysis of crime data since the founding of the PRC show that the internal structure of China’s crime phenomena displays a trend of two periods of decline and two of growth, indicating that the country’s crime governance performs quite well. In the era of big data, in response to the requirements of national governance and crime governance, crime statistics’ rule-of-law-based system of statistical indicators should be improved, as should statistical organization based on the needs of data interconnection and the system of publication and application based on the principle of data sharing. In the context of the modernization of China’s governance system and governance capacity, crime governance is the scientific approach to crime phenomena. The inevitable path towards modern crime governance in the new era should start with statistics-based governance, optimize the strategic objectives and policy legislation of crime governance, locate the targets of governance accurately, allocate governance resources efficiently, evaluates governance performance rationally, and makes full use of science and technology to improve governance effectiveness and efficiency. The application to crime governance of the figures, the statistics and big data is expected to promote the in-depth integration of criminology with the study of criminal policy, criminal jurisprudence, big data, artificial intelligence, etc., and lead to the advancement of criminology, criminal policy studies, and criminal jurisprudence, thus transforming them from “fact-based studies” “decision-making studies” and “studies of legal norms” to a new “study of criminal governance.”