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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, October 24, 2002

Lifting the 'Mystical Veil' of China's Jails

A prison is full of mystery for most people who used to link it with such terms as dark and cruel, failing to give a true picture of the prison. In its viewpoint, the Legal Weekly of this issue will lift the "mystical veil" of China's jail for you through dialogs.


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Families Reunited in Henan No.1 Prison
Highlights:
The prison is in good order, practicing strict discipline, quiet and solemn, ant neat and clean, presenting a different world from what is imagined by the people. It gives more expressions to civilization and humanity in management.

In some provincial- and ministerial-level modern civilized prisons, their hardware facilities are not in the least inferior to and are even better than the most modern American prisons as shown in movies.

The prisoners each have a meat dish and a vegetable dish in each meal, they can eat staple food as they please. There are jailers of exquisite workmanship in the canteen (the weekly menu clearly indicates the food nutrition constituent and calorie each meal can produce.

The prison hospital is located inside the high wall, when an offender feels a bit unwell, he or she will be immediately sent to the hospital for physical check, those with acute disease can be checked and treated generally within two to three minutes.


Home Built for Prisoners' Children in Beijing


A prison is full of mystery for most people who used to link it with such terms as dark and cruel, failing to give a true picture of the prison. In its viewpoint, the Legal Weekly of this issue will lift the "mystical veil" of China's jail for you through dialogs.

Viewpoint: Judged from the already known situation, what does the prison look like in the impression of most people?

PD Democracy & Legal Weekly: The jail is a mystical place for those who have never entered it. What's more, in face of the dividing line marking freedom and non-freedom, it is impossible for people not to feel disturbed and uneasy about a jail which is separated merely by a door or a wall from the outside. Many people ask with curiosity, "Is it specially 'dark' inside the prison?" The word "dark" they refer to here has a many-faceted implication. People with some education and social experience can get the answer at a glance.

Viewpoint: Why, then, has the prison left an impression of very "dark" in people's minds?

Weekly: There are many reasons for this, first, our prisons were closed too tightly in the past, and there was too little publicity about them, with the result that people had a sense of mystery about prisons; second, people saw too many gloomy stories in TV show and films about ancient prisons, Kuomintang prisons and foreign prisons, and they "transplant" those impressions into China's modern prisons-fierce-looking prison officers, gloomy and frightful cell-rooms and dirty deals under the horizontal board inscribed with the characters "Open and Above-board".

One more reason that must not be neglected is that before the launch of the reform and opening policy, China's legal system was extremely imperfect and China's prisons left a bad impression on those who had been put behind prison bars.

Viewpoint: What's the real general situation in Chinese present prisons?

Weekly: They are in good order, strict discipline, quiet and solemn, and neat and hygienic, presenting a world entirely different from that in people's imagination. More expressions are given to civilization and humanity in management. It is seen from a copy of material: "Beginning from 1985, Tianjin prisons allowed a number of prisoners to go home to spend the lunar New Year, and a dozen or so offenders were allowed to go home to visit their relatives after the Yuan Xiao Jie (the night of the 15th of the 1st lunar month), they all returned to the prison at the appointed time."

Viewpoint: Let our conversation begin with the hardware facilities of the prison, please say something about the situation about the hardware facilities in some prisons.

Weekly: In economically better developed provinces, those applying for being or already been approved as provincial- or ministerial-level modern civilized prisons have increased their input in the construction of infrastructures, the environment there has experienced great change. In terms of prison hardware facilities, the best ones are in Dongguan and Shenzhen prisons in Guangdong Province.

After you enter Dongguan Prison, if you are not often shown where the place you are in by surrounding high walls and electrified nets, if it is not due to those prisoners in prison suits who often pass by, you will definitely regard the place as the campus of a university or as a garden-like residential area. The prison's teaching building is imposing with a lecture theatre capable of accommodating several hundred people and several psychological therapeutic rooms of novel design and beautiful decoration and audio-visual teaching equipment.

Shenzhen prison can be called the most modern jail in China. Settled on a hilly area dozens of km from the suburb of Shenzhen, it is not only beautiful in appearance, but its internal facilities are very advanced. All doors of the prison rooms are computer-controlled, the railings of doors are made of stainless steel, so are tables in prisoners' dining hall. The guiding ideology of the municipal government leader is reportedly to be clear-cut: that is to build a modernized prison not to fall backward in 20 year. It can be said Shenzhen Prison's hardware facilities are not in the least inferior to but even better than the most modernized US prison as seen in the film.

In a variety of prison buildings in some localities, there are houses for prisoners, who give a good account of themselves, to live in with their families for 72 hours.

Viewpoint: From these remarks we can infer that the hardware facilities of present prisons are quite good. But we don't know how about the meals for today's prisoners? Because in the impression of many people, prisoners can't eat their fill, not to say well fed, using terrible food as a means to punish prisoners, is this true?

Weekly: Of course not. For example, when this reporter covered the Shandong Lunan Prison, the deepest impression he got was the prisoners' kitchen. The kitchen is as big as two basketball courts, resembling two factory workshops, one is for preparing staple food, another is for non-staple food. The prisoners each have two dishes: one meat and one vegetables, the prisoners can eat principal food as they like, so failing to eat one's fill is definitely out of the question. A "weekly menu" by a prisoner of exquisite workmanship was posted on a side wall on which it was indicated what was to be eaten in each meal for the week, the nutrient constituent of these foods and the calorie they produce, there was even menu worked out specially for a few moslems.

Later we saw kitchens like that in Lunan Prison in many other jails, we also saw their well-prepared menus, in some of which even tableware were made with stainless steel.

Viewpoint: In prisons there are often some old, weak, sick and disabled inmates, since they are physically different from ordinary prisoners, are they managed differently, and what to do with them if they fall ill?

Weekly: There is currently a district marked out especially for old, weak, sick and handicapped prisoners in each jail. The aims of this measure are first for easy management; second for appropriate care given to them in terms of life and labor.

The Beijing Prison Management Bureau takes even bigger step in this respect, it simply gathers all old, weak, sick and disabled criminals from various prisons in Beijing together and turns Yanqing Prison into one specially for such offenders. President Zhang Fengde of the prison hospital told us the hospital is settled inside the wall, close to the prison houses, if a prisoner feels unwell, he or she would immediately be sent to the hospital for physical check, an offender suffering acute disease would be given medical check and treatment in two to three minutes. In addition, prisoners enjoy free medical treatment. Before the arrival of flu each year, the hospital would vaccinate prisoners at and above 60 and hospitalized feeble jailers against flu.

Viewpoint: In fact, besides showing interest in living conditions in the prisons, people want to have a better understanding of things like reducing penalty, release on parole and released on bail for medical service, many people think here lots of "mao-ni, literally cat grease" (bribery), is this true?

Weekly: Frankly speaking, there were some problems in the past. Even today, similar events often occur in individual places. For example, head of a prison administrative section who received bribes when he joined others in handling a case of reducing penalty for an offender, he was then arrested by a procuratorate. Not long ago, the result of handling the case was published on the Legal Daily: Three people--this section chief, a judge of a local intermediate court and another person-were sentenced, similar events also occurred occasionally in other provinces and cities, personnel involved were given due punishment. In recent years, the Ministry of Justice has extensively launched the activity "making public prison affairs" in the nation's prison departments, thus greatly enhancing the transparency in the process of enforcing criminal penalty. The phenomenon of "dark box operation" has been by and large eliminated. If someone practices 'mao-ni" (bribery) on this issue by seeking personal gains in defiance of universal condemnation and for fear of hurting others' feelings, he or she will hardly escape legal punishment. The above case is a very good proof.

Currently, a score-recording system is instituted for the management of prisoners in all prisons nationwide, when the scores of a prisoner are accumulated to a certain degree, he can receive commendation, when commendations are accumulated to a certain degree, he can be given penalty reduction for his meritorious service. In Shandong's Lunan, Huihu, Tengzhou and Weifang prisons, a list of the prisoners granted penalty reduction is published in each prison district, people who have objections can report to the leaders of the prison districts or to the prison leaders by passing the immediate leadership. In addition, the procuratorate set up a special agency in the prison which is in charge of handling various offence reports and complaints.

By People's Daily Online


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