Trafficking in women and children; The crime of buying abducted and trafficked women and children; The right not to be bought or sold; Limited improvement theory
The question of whether the statutory punishment for the crime of buying abducted and traffickedwomen and children is appropriate has aroused heated discussions among scholars, and there are mainly fourviews: the theory of the same punishment for buying and selling, the theory of maintenance, the theory ofabolishing the crime, and the theory of limited increase. The theory of the same punishment for buying andselling ignores the social harmfulness of the crime of buying and selling women and children, that is, there is adifference between the objective harm and the subjective degree of illegality. The maintenance theory erroneouslyunderstands the crime of buying abducted and trafficked women and children as a preparatory offense forsubsequent felonies, and evaluates the two as felonies in the form of combined punishment for multiple crimes;The abolition of the crime ignores the independent value of the crime of buying abducted women and children,and overinterprets the meaning of the word “sale”. A limited increase in the statutory sentence for the crime ofbuying abducted and trafficked women and children can solve the problems of the crime in judicial practice, suchas the excessively high probation rate and the low actual sentence rate, and achieve its own micro-level balance ofcrime and punishment; Balance the statutory penalties for the crime of buying and selling women and children,and compare the statutory penalties with the crimes of insult and defamation, so as to achieve an overall macrobalance of crime and punishment.