Paper by the Delegation of the People’s Republic of China at the 22nd APCCA on Agenda Item 1:
In accordance with the Criminal Procedure Law and the Prison Law of the People’s Republic of China, criminals that have been sentenced by the court to the death penalty with two years reprieve, life-time imprisonment, fixed-term imprisonment shall be put to prisons to serve their sentence. As at the end of 2001, there are 697 prisons and 1,505,000 prisoners in China, and the imprisonment rate is 119 out of 100,000.
The correctional officers in China are by nature a category of policemen. The current number of correctional policemen is 288, 000.
The Chinese prisons follow a policy of integrating the punishment and reform and taking the reform of the prisoners as the aim. The Chinese prisons take the reform of the criminals into law-abiding citizens as the target of the penalty enforcement. Through the practice of the past five decades, a prison system with Chinese characteristics has shaped, of which the main points are as the follows:
1. Taking the reform of the criminals as the aim of the correctional work. The adherence to the policy of integrating punishment and reform, taking the rehabilitation of criminals as the base, and reforming the criminals into law-abiding citizens is taken as the starting point and end-result of the prison work.
2. Attaching importance to the systematic legal, moral, cultural and technical education to prisoners. The various education are designed to correct the criminal sense of the prisoners, and help them to turn into a citizen that knows and tends to abide by the law, and a person that has mastered certain knowledge and technical skills.
3. Adhering to a policy of integrating education and labor, and organizing those prisoners that have the laboring ability to labor. This policy is intended to help the prisoners to cultivate the working habit, to learn the working skills, and to have means for making a living after being released, and thus to reduce the relapse of crimes.
4. Giving play to the correctional and rehabilitating functions of administration and management. It is expected that the lawful, strict, scientific and civilized administration and management can serve to correct the criminals’ wrong ideology and bad behavior modes.
5. Ensuring that the criminals may see hope while serving their sentence. The Chinese prisons stick to a policy of giving a way out, and adopt means such as penalty reduction and parole to mobilize the initiatives and consciousness of the prisoners to reform.
6. Safeguarding the legal rights and benefits of the prisoners. Respect must be shown to the personality of the prisoners. Degrading, beating, corporal punishment and other ill-treatment of prisoners are rigidly prohibited. And the fundamental rights of prisoners in terms of sanitation, medical service, education, labor, etc., are ensured.
7. Resorting to the participation of the community in the correction of prisoners. The relevant social institutions, people from all sectors of the society and the relatives of the prisoners are encouraged and mobilized to participate in the assistance and education of the prisoners.
8. Attaching importance to the training of the correctional policemen and promotion of their professional qualities.
II. Latest Advancements in the Correctional Field
The new advancements that have been attained in recent years can be summed into the following aspects:
1. The security inside the prisons has achieved the best in history. The prison authorities at various levels take the security and stability inside the prisons as the priority work target. The security rules and regulations have been better implemented. The security sense of the prison policemen has been further enhanced. And therefore the prison security has been better safeguarded.
2. In order to improve the transparency of the criminal penalty enforcement, and to enhance the knowledge and supervision by the community of the prison work, the prisons all over the country have been practicing the program of making open the prison management affairs. The program of opening of the prison management affairs is an initiative of making open to both the prisoner and community the operation system, operation procedure and the relevant results of the prisons in their enforcement of the criminal penalty, making the prisons perform their responsibilities under the supervision of the prisoners and the community, and thus to ensure the realization of fairness in the justice administration especially in the application of such systems as penalty reduction, parole and temporary outside-prison enforcement. The program of making open the prison management affairs has helped to strengthen the human resources construction of the prison policemen, and to provide a better systematic safeguarding for the impartial enforcement of law by the prisons. The program has also mobilized the initiatives of the prisoners to reform, and made closer the ties between the prisons and the communities.
3. The education to prisoners has been further strengthened and improved. In recent years, the Chinese prison authorities have been attaching importance to the exploration of new correctional methods and means, and the principle of individualization of the penalty enforcement has been better implemented. Now the Chinese prisons have particularly emphasized the application of the knowledge of psychology, sociology and criminology and other subjects of science in corrections. There are more and more uses of the method of individualized education of prisoners. Various cultural activities are frequently conducted in prisons. Activities such as theatrical performances, sports meetings, reading and speech-making contests, and calligraphy and painting competitions, etc., have not only enriched the prison life of the prisoners, but also enabled the prisoners to get education and draw lessons. Besides, programs of education by relatives, education by social volunteers and legal aid, etc., are also being carried out in a number of prisons. All these activities have proved helpful for the prisoners to see hopes, to re-establish the confidence for future life and spend the prison term in a proper manner.
4. The education for the prison policemen in the respect of proper enforcement of law has been strengthened, and the legal qualities of the prison officers have been promoted. The education is based on the penal law, the criminal procedure law and the prison law and other basic laws. This program has served to improve the supervision mechanism and integrity construction inside the prisons. By this program, the legal consciousness and legal sense of the prison policemen have been further enhanced, and the law enforcement level has been evidently improved.
In addition, the system of prison rules and regulations has been improved, and this development has provided a more solid and sound foundation for running the prisons according to law. What is more, the program of constructing modern civilized prisons is still in process. The program has mobilized most of the prisons to have improved their security and supervisory facilities and their sanitary and medical facilities, and the improvement has also been evidently witnessed in the management level and law enforcement level of the prisons.
Nowadays, there are still a number of problems and challenges facing the Chinese prisons, which can be listed as follows:
1. The overcrowding inside prisons. In recent years, a number of prisons in China have witnessed overcrowding, and this problem appears more evident in coastal areas such as Guangdong Province and Zhejiang Province. The Chinese prison authorities are now trying to solve this problem in various ways. The ways that are now being tried include: One, to readjust the geographical distribution of prisons, making the distribution in balance with the population distribution generally. Two, to carry out transfers of prisoners between prisons, by which to lessen the burden of the prisons that suffer extraordinarily serious overcrowding. Three, to enlarge the prison capacity by re-designing and expanding of the existing prisons and building of new prisons. Four, to increase the use of parole and temporary outside-prison enforcement of the penalty within the framework of law. Five, to actively deepen the reform of the system of penalty enforcement, increasing the use of non-custodial corrections of criminals. Six, to actively explore the best social policy and the crime prevention policy, adopting a comprehensive way for the treatment of the social order, and thus to curb the crime rate.
2. The basic facilities inside prisons are still weak. Since some prisons were built in quite early times, and the subsequent input are from enough, the renewing of facilities in such prisons is slow. So in such prisons, there is a problem that the facilities are old and backward and even in shortage. Such a problem has caused some detrimental effects on the prison security, and has added constraint to the further development of these prisons’ work. To solve this problem, such measures as following have been being tried. One, to set standards for prison construction by way of legislation, and to ensure the achievement of those standards by the input of the state. Two, with the modernization drive of the country, to actively push forward the construction of modern civilized prisons. As part of this program, some model prisons have been selected so as to expect a general development in the modern direction. Three, as part of the readjustment of the distribution of prisons, to join up or close down some prisons whose basic facilities are extraordinarily poor. Four, to try to carry out a proper security classification of prisons, by which to avoid equal input among all prisons in terms of the prison security facilities. Emphasis should be given to the facilities construction of the high security and medium security prisons.
3. The need to explore how to further improve the efficacy of the prison work. With the gradual establishment of the market economy in China, higher requirements have been raised for the corrections of criminals. To respond to the higher requirements, we are also trying to do the following explorations: One, to further strengthen the creative exploration in the corrections of the criminals. Based on the changing situation and features of crimes and criminals, we are paying close attention to the readjustment of the contents, formats, means and methods of corrections. Two, to give play as fully as possible to the role of the community resources, trying to get more and more concern, support and assistance from the community. Three, to further promote the scientific level of the corrections of the criminals. We are now exploring to establish scientific offenders classification system and efficacy evaluation system for corrections. We will pay more attention to the comprehensive use of all possible reformative means.