The escape rate from Chinese prisons dropped by 96.7 percent in the past decade, while crime in prison is down 83.3 percent, said the Ministry of Justice on Thursday.

Chinese prisons made progress by improving facilities and management, though increasing crimes implicating gangsters, violence and drug trafficking have made the prison population more complicated and dangerous, said Fan Fangping, Vice Minister of Justice, Thursday.

Thanks to the national Prison Law that took effect ten years ago, prisons established a basic management framework and tried many new methods of correction, he said.

The administration is moving prisons from remote countryside and mountainous regions to city suburbs. These prisons are equipped with better facilities, and it is easier for families and folks to visit inmates.

In some of the old, remote jails, inmates often worked outdoors, increasing the difficulty of the guards' jobs.

Meanwhile, the Ministry is thinking of updating the way it has categorized prisons for five decades in a bid to make jails safer and more efficient.

It plans to divide prisons into three types: low security, medium security and high security, according to the harm their inmates might do to society, especially the violence of the crimes for which they were incarcerated.

Currently the government sorts prisons in two different ways. They are categorized by whether their inmates have long or short terms, and there are also separate prisons for men and women and education centers for juveniles.

According to the principle of combining penalty with correction written in Prison Law, Chinese jails have adopted various methods to help change prisoners into law-abiding citizens, Fan said.

From 1994 to 2003, about 1.7 million Chinese inmates gained diplomas through studying behind bars, more than 60,000 gained junior technical certificates and 2,000 got senior ones.

China now has more than 1.5 million inmates in 670 prisons. The ministry had said earlier that 8 percent of released prisoners committed crimes again.

Fan did not release the present prisoner escape rate.