BY NING LILI

Community correction publicity activity launched by the Pinggu District of Beijing

  China started experiments in community correction in 2003. By the end of June 2007, experiments had spread to 25 provinces and municipalities. The 4,189 communities and townships received more than 110,000 offenders.

  Their experiments have proved that the practice has not only lowered costs as compared with prison service but also improved the reform results. Statistics show that the annual cost for one convicted offender serving prison terms is as high as 25,000~30,000 yuan. But community correction cost only 5,000 yuan per person. The crime recurrence rate has dropped to below 0.21%.

   The correction centers offer substance abuse services, employment services, mental health services and subsidy assistance and specialized treatment services, according to Li Jiwu, deputy Party secretary of the Bureau of Justice of Shanghai.

  By providing a continuum of supervision, sanctions and services, community correction has reduced criminal conduct and promoted behavioral change. As a result, more and more persons subject to community correction have returned to society, with full confidence.

  In Beijing, community correction divides the correction procedures into three stages: the preliminary period, regular period and transitional period before release. The correction centers have applied appropriate intervention and treatment at the earliest possible time. They have offered a variety of mental health services, which includes mental health education, psychological consulting service and, for those mentally ill offenders they are referred to mental health counselors or service providers for treatment. Medications, if needed, are designed to address specific treatment needs.

  The correction centers provide free job training to those offenders who have the desire for work but do not have the necessary skills.

  The centers also ensure minimum cost of living for offenders who are old, weak, infirmed and who have no sources of income and provide them with subsidies to solve their real problems to minimize the objective factors for repeating crimes.

  The correction center of Chaoyang District in Beijing, for instance, took in 1,838 offenders up to the end of June, 2007. At present, there are still 766 offenders left. The district has found it difficult to find jobs for those set free, as those offenders are still subject to discrimination. All the neighborhood communities have made great efforts in this regard. Some people proposed the setup of a relief fund to provide relief to freed offenders who cannot find work and do not have any resources for living. They deem that the government is obliged to help those people in the process of correction.

"Community Correction Publicity" activity lanched by the Chongwen District of Beijing

  In 2005, the Bureau of Justice of Chaoyang District set up a community correction service center. The center offers ten services. Job training is among them. It has built 16 training bases, covering cooking, hair-dressing, computer operation and musical instrument tuning. The service center has opened a mental health department, which, apart from offering normal psychological consulting, provides specialized treatment services, including anger management and relapse prevention.

  Now the district is building a temporary home to provide life and job skill training for those who have been set free but do not have home to return to, no relatives to turn to and no sources of living. "We just give them a sense of home so that they would not turn to their friends released from prisons, as the possibility of repeating crimes is the highest within the first six months after release," said Deputy Head of the Chaoyang Bureau of Justice.

  In March 2006, a man with the family name of Zhao, who was convicted for 15-year imprisonment, returned to the community for correction. The community tried to conceal his capacity, saying that he was a new volunteer when he was doing public welfare labor in the community so that he lived as a normal person. This was the most important thing for a convicted, as "eyes can kill." This practice has renewed his drive and determination to repent and work hard.

  "Without work, without source of living, plus discrimination, the offenders are easy to go back to their old ways," said Li Junming, head of the Justice Office of Zuojiazhuang Community, who has helped the correction participants a lot out of his own pocket. "When they return home, they have nothing. If the family refuses to accept them and the community and Justice Office do nothing to help, it is tantamount to pushing them back to their old ways."

  So, the first thing for the community and Justice Office to do is to provide employment services. At first, they contacted several units but none was willing to accept him. In the end, the Justice Office found him a job at a printing mill of a university, with a monthly salary of some 1,000 yuan. There, nobody knows his past except the leaders of the mill.

  The community correction service center has carried out mental health evaluation of the participants and managed them in three different categories according to the evaluation results. When Zhao first returned to the community for correction, he was rated as "C", subject to the tightest control. Apart from doing public welfare labor, he was required to report to the Justice Office once a week by telephone, submit one performance report every month and have a talk with the police once every month. Now, Zhao’s rating has been raised to the lightest “A”, by which he is required to report to the Justice Office once every month and submit a performance report once every six months.

  Guannan County of Jiangsu Province has also done excellently in community correction. It offers labor program services, legal education services, skill training services, tradition education services and employment services and set up five major experiment bases correspondingly.

  The county has selected economic development zones, public spaces for the correction participants to do labor, setting the way and time for labor and the time for education and devising safeguard measures. The communities allow correction participants who perform well to select work and time.

   For legal education, the county used county and township schools for the offenders to sit in lectures, participate in quizzes on law, read legal newspapers, sing songs and do community services. The communities have also cited real cases to drive home the importance of observing discipline and law abiding. They have also organized the offenders to visit mausoleums and commemoration halls for revolutionary martyrs to inspire in them the admirations for the revolutionary traditions and patriotism. They have also organized offenders to see changes in town and country and encourage them to accelerate the pace of their reform so as to return to the modernization drive at the earliest possible time.

  The employment services include skill training. In recent years, the county has organized eight skill training courses and the participants in more than 300 community correction centers have received training. Among them, 100 people freed from correction have found jobs.

  For those old, the weak, infirm and handicapped correction targets, the county provides them with insurance of minimum cost of living. Those who have special skills and who have mastered some kind of skills are referred to the labor market in and outside the county, letting them participate in employee recruitment fairs and finding them jobs.