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Chinese law stipulates that the reform of criminals through labour
should be combined with legal, moral, cultural, and technical education.
Since most criminals are young, without much education and legally
ignorant, an important part of the work of reform-through-labour
is helping the prisoners become better educated and acquire more
legal, moral and cultural awareness and working skills. To meet
these objectives Chinese reform-through-labour institutions now
run special schools, creating a criminal reform system with Chinese
characteristics.
Since 1981 the Chinese Government has included education of criminals
in its national educational programme. Where conditions permit,
prisons and reform-through-labour institutions are required to set
up special educational institutions to form a complete educational
system for formal and institutionalized legal, moral, cultural,
and technical education of prisoners. By the end of 1991, 72.82%
of all prisons and reform-through-labour institutions had established
such special schools.
The legal and moral education of criminals in reform- through-labour
institutions emphasizes the need to plead guilty, abide by the law,
improve moral values and better one's outlook on life. The purpose
is to help criminals know, abide by, and accept the law and to improve
their moral standards.
Legal education for prisoners mainly consists of studying the Constitution
of the People's Republic of China, Criminal Law, Law of Criminal
Procedure, General Provisions of the Civil Law, and "Code of Civil
Law Procedures", etc. This enables them to learn the basic rights
and obligations of a citizen, the legal consequences for committing
a crime and the basic contents of the criminal law, the criminal
justice system and the basic civil laws relating to marriage, family,
rights of persons and property rights. On this basis, they should
be able to draw a clear distinction between legal and illegal actions
or criminal and non-criminal acts and become fully aware of the
danger and legal consequences of criminal actions, so that they
may admit their guilt, obey the laws and voluntarily accept reform.
Education in morality and outlook on life focuses on issues which
are closely related to a prisoner's immediate interests, such as
his or her ideals, happiness, conscience, pleasure or sadness, honour
or humiliation, future, marriage, family, etc., making them understand
proper social morality and sense of value so that a prisoner can
clearly distinguish honour from humiliation, civilized from uncivilized
behaviour, noble from base actions, and beauty from ugliness. At
the same time, individual and specific education is provided to
suit individual cases and coordinate with the lessons learned from
their criminal activities. This has proven effective in reforming
the minds of criminals.
According to statistics, 98.92% of all prisoners in China took
part in legal and moral education in 1991. One prisoner in Guizhou
named Mei, who took the legal and moral education seriously, overcame
his bad habits during imprisonment. Since completing his sentence
he has been well-behaved and law-abiding. He has prospered through
his hard work and won the trust of the masses who elected him as
the head of a model village, deputy to the township people's congress
and member of the county committee of the political consultative
conference.
Elimination of illiteracy and attainment of universal junior secondary
education are the main objectives of cultural education in prisons,
but criminals with a higher educational level are encouraged to
attend correspondence colleges, part-time colleges or TV colleges
offered by society.
Chinese reform-through-labour institutions regularly test the educational
level of prisoners and prison students are divided into different
grades and classes similar to the teaching programme in schools
in society at large. Prisoners whose educational level is below
the junior secondary school level are generally required to attend
classes.
The overall director of a prison or reform-through-labour institution
also serves as the principal of the institution's special school.
The school also has a dean and teachers' office plus a teaching
programme and curriculum prepared each school term and year. Prisoners
study about two hours a day or 12 hours a week. Teaching staff are
especially selected for the school and some are chosen from among
prisoners with a higher educational level. Prisoners who have attended
classes and passed the tests given by the local educational department
will be given educational certificates equivalent to those issued
by educational institutions in the society at large.
According to statistics, at the end of 1991, there were over 12,000
classes of various kinds being offered at China's prisons and reform-through-labour
institutions. Over 518,000 prisoners attended the classes and the
92.35% of those eligible to attend were admitted. There were 5,300
prisoners studying through classes offered in publications, correspondence
colleges, part-time colleges, and TV colleges and 4,000 who took
higher education examinations for self-study students. Over the
last six years, prisoners have been awarded a total of 902,000 certificates
or diplomas of various kinds. A three-year regular educational programme
which has been instituted for prisoners in the Third Prison of Shandong
Province has brought the illiteracy rate there down from 17.6% to
1.3%. In addition, the number of prisoners with less than a primary
school education has dropped from 65% to 5.3% and the number of
those who have a junior secondary education or above has increased
substantially. Revidivism has dropped to 1.9%. There was once a
youth from the city of Shenyang who was sentenced to reform-through-labour
because of his involvement in a gang theft. While serving his sentence,
he conscientiously accepted reform and actively participated in
the classes organized by the reform-through-labour institution.
After he was released from prison he passed his college entrance
examination and later was even admitted as a postgraduate at Harbin
Industrial University, where he obtained an MA degree.
Vocational education is a major part of the education programme
for criminals in China. According to statistics, over 561,000 criminals
took part in training courses for various skills in 1991, representing
83.18% of the total number of prisoners who were eligible. A total
of 546,000 certificates for various levels of technical proficiency
were issued to prisoners by the labour departments in society as
a result of testing.
To augment vocational training for prisoners, prisons and reform-through-labour
institutions feature vocational teaching and research facilities,
classrooms, laboratories and experimental plots set up by agricultural
work units. Vocational teaching materials and various forms of reference
material are provided free for the prisoners. Teachers are generally
selected from among engineers, technicians and agricultural experts
within the reform-through-labour institutions supplemented by technicians
and teachers from schools or other institutions in society. Taking
into account the social needs of prisoners who have been released
plus the fact that they go in different directions, short, practical
and immediately useful programmes are the main focus of vocational
and technical training. Through courses which teach subjects such
as home appliance repair, tailoring and sewing, cooking, hair-dressing,
home poultry raising, carpentry, bricklaying, electricity and agricultural
implement repair, prisoners acquire one or more skills during their
imprisonment, in preparation for finding employment after their
release. A study of 720 former prisoners with technical skills conducted
by a reform-through-labour institution in Jinan, Shandong Province
revealed that 96% found employment soon after returning to society.
Some returned to their original work units and some were employed
as key technical personnel inordinary enterprises. Still others
set up household businesses, construction operations or other service
industries, becoming individual business operators who behave themselves
and abide by the law. A reform-through-labour institution in Lingyuan,
Liaoning Province made a study 124 former inmates who had acquired
technical proficiency certificates in prison. All of them had jobs
and none had committed new crimes.
The systematic legal, moral, cultural and technical education of
criminals is intended to make prisons and reform- through-labour
institutions like special schools for educating and reforming criminals.
This represents an important improvement in reform-through-labour
work in the country as well as a development in the construction
of a socialist legal system in China. Experience has shown that
it is an effective way to improve our work in reforming criminals
and promotes a good social order. This policy has generated a systematic
legal system with Chinese characteristics.
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