The 365-episode TV series, named Crime and Penalty, is adapted from genuine cases heard in courts around the country.

Every episode tells the story of a case, lasts 15 minutes and contains three parts: the court hearing records, the case review, and experts' comments.

As scheduled, Shanghai will contribute 40 cases for the series, mainly with a financial focus.

This is the country's second year of its fourth five-year campaign to promote awareness of the law.

Beginning last year, every December 4 has been a special day devoted to the promotion.

The series is one of the campaign's main projects. The episodes were created to be interesting and instructive to ordinary people, as well as serve as references for judges.

"The courts are charged with two tasks including holding trials and educating people," said Liu Jiachen, deputy president of China's Supreme People's Court. "Courts used to focus on the result of a case, and pay little attention to the cause of the crime."

In recent years, the number of court cases has jumped due to social development. In Shanghai, a total of 220,000 cases were handled annually in the past several years, compared with around 90,000 in the early 1990s.

In the three-month campaign since August, police throughout the country have investigated a total of 870,000 robberies, arresting 740,000 suspects.

(China Daily December 5, 2002)