Does sending insulting messages constitute a crime?

It depends on the actual situation. If the circumstances are serious, it constitutes a crime. Sending messages many times to insult others, causing others to be unable to live a normal life, should be punished by public security management. Be detained for not more than five days or fined not more than five hundred yuan; If the circumstances are serious, they shall be detained for not less than five days but not more than ten days, and may also be fined not more than 500 yuan.

Legal analysis

It is illegal to send text messages to insult others. If the situation is serious, you can call the police for help. Sending insulting messages is not a crime, it is illegal. Sending messages many times to insult others and interfere with their normal life is illegal and will be punished by public security management. The constitutive requirements of the crime of insult are that the subject of the crime is anyone who bears criminal responsibility, subjectively, there is a direct intention to insult and belittle others, and the object of the crime is the personal dignity infringed by violence (throwing feces, splashing urine, etc.) or other methods (language, writing, blog). The objective requirement is openness, and the circumstances are serious. If peer-to-peer SMS is obviously not public, mass SMS should also be considered public. If the circumstances are serious, you need to prove that it has caused serious harm to your spirit (requiring judicial expertise) or caused people to have a wrong understanding and evaluation of your personality. To sum up, short message abuse does not meet the conviction standard of insult crime and does not constitute a crime, but it violates the regulations on public security management.

legal ground

Article 42 of the People's Republic of China (PRC) Public Security Administration Punishment Law shall be detained for less than five days or fined less than five hundred yuan for any of the following acts; If the circumstances are serious, he shall be detained for not less than five days but not more than ten days, and may also be fined not more than 500 yuan: (1) writing threatening letters or threatening the personal safety of others by other means; (2) publicly insulting others or fabricating facts to slander others; (3) fabricating facts, falsely accusing and framing others, and attempting to subject others to criminal investigation or public security administration punishment; (4) Threatening, insulting, beating or retaliating against witnesses and their close relatives; (5) sending obscene, insulting, intimidating or other information for many times to interfere with the normal life of others; (six) voyeurism, sneak shots, eavesdropping, spreading the privacy of others.

Article 246 Whoever publicly insults others by violence or other means or fabricates facts to slander others, if the circumstances are serious, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention, public surveillance or deprivation of political rights. The crimes mentioned in the preceding paragraph shall be dealt with only if they are told, except those that seriously endanger social order and national interests. If the victim informs the people's court of the acts specified in the first paragraph through the information network, but it is really difficult to provide evidence, the people's court may request the public security organ to provide assistance.