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Chloe Lai

Three  more cases of prison abuse have surfaced, just days after judicial authorities at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress  pledged more frequent inspections of detention facilities to prevent inmates from being bullied or tortured.
Lawyers say the latest cases highlight the urgent need for  judicial  reform to prevent torture in detention centres and prisons. 
Hu Fenqiang,  a suspect in Xiangtan,  Hunan  province, was certified dead on Thursday after losing consciousness at a detention centre. 
Hu was being held for a number of robberies and brawling between July 2007 and last December, Xinhua said yesterday.
Police officers involved in Hu's  interrogation have been suspended from duty while under investigation.
Xinhua quoted the Xiangtan city government as saying it would take the  case seriously, vowing the investigation would be fast, thorough and fair.
A separate abuse case also emerged yesterday, in which a 19-year-old high school student, Xu Gengrong,  died on March 8 at a  detention centre in Danfeng county,  Shaanxi  province.
Xu had been detained since March 1 on suspicion of murdering a female student whose body was found a month ago. 
Xu's friend Wu Ming,  also detained by police in the case, complained that he was badly beaten during his three days in police detention. 
Xu's case led to uproar in Danfeng  after his friends and relatives accused the police of torture after seeing his body. They said there were bruises on his arms, hands and legs and blood in his nostrils. 
In Hainan,  the head and deputy head of a Danzhou  detention centre and a police officer were detained after a man was beaten to death by his fellow inmates for refusing to  remove his clothes for a shower.
The police officer was detained for dereliction of duty because he did not stop the brawl despite witnessing it. The others were sacked and given a  warning. 
Custodial care came under the spotlight recently after the suspicious death of a 24-year-old inmate, Li Qiaoming,  in a detention centre in Yunnan's  Jinning county.  
Local police had attributed his death to a brain injury sustained in a game of 'hide-and-seek'  while in custody, but they later admitted that he died from a brutal beating by fellow inmates. Prosecutors had responded to a public outcry and stepped in to investigate the case. 
The high-profile case in Yunnan prompted procurator general  Cao Jianming  to say last week that the authorities would step up oversight of the courts and prison system to tackle problems such as torture.
He said the procuratorate would strengthen monitoring against torture during investigations, overlong detentions, inappropriate sentence reductions, and probation and sentences served outside jail.
Xia Lin,  a criminal lawyer in Beijing, questioned Mr  Cao's strategy. 
'More and more cases have emerged,' he said. 'It shows how serious abuse is in detention facilities. Stepping up inspections is not going to solve the problem.'
Mr  Xia blamed the problem on the conflicting roles of police in running detention facilities, identifying suspects and resolving cases. 
'When police officers are under pressure to resolve cases, they are tempted to use every possible means to get a suspect to talk, easily leading to torture,' he said. 
'To solve the problem, these places must be managed by a third party such as the judiciary and not the police.'



3 more prison deaths highlight need for reform