More than 1,000 inmates signed preliminary employment agreements with 65 companies at a job fair held at a jail in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province on Tuesday.

The job fair, the first of its kind in the province, was designed to "help the soon-to-be-released prisoners reintegrate with society," said Liu Wanqing, director of Hunan Prison Administrative Bureau.

Xiao Tang, 21, who will be released in a few days, signed a job agreement with a clothing manufacturer in Guangdong Province.

"I have been here so long that I don't know what employers need or are looking for anymore," the young woman said. "A job fair like this really helps me a lot."

Many people, however, are still biased against people newly released from prison. Many ex-prisoners have no choice but to keep their criminal records secret when applying for jobs, Liu said.

"The job fair serves as a platform for employers and prisoners to know more about one another, which helps them to find what they need. More important, the prisoners need to feel that society respects and cares for them," Liu added.

"The second point is more important to the prisoners," Liu said.

The Rongtai Restaurant in Changsha hired 25 waitresses and four security guards at Tuesday's fair. "Our restaurant promised to give equal treatment to all our employees, whether or not they had been in jail," said Miss Zhou, head of human resources at the restaurant.

All the 28 jails in Hunan run vocational training programs for prisoners. More than 7,000 inmates have received training since the province established the first jail focusing on vocational training in its rehabilitation programs in 2002, Liu said.

"Experience has shown helping rehabilitated prisoners find jobs effectively keeps them from committing crimes again," Liu said.

Of the 7,000 released prisoners who did receive vocational training, only four have committed crimes again, Liu said.

The Hunan Prison Administrative Bureau has also set up a website to provide job information to prisoners and it's deciding if it should run two job fairs for prisoners a year, Liu said.

About 10,000 prisoners are released from jails each year in Hunan.

(Xinhua News Agency July 20, 2005)