Abuse of parole system targeted in corruption crackdown
Three types of criminals placed under stricter scrutiny in new move to strengthen regulation
The Communist Party's Central Politics and Law Commission yesterday issued a guideline to strengthen supervision and increase transparency in its parole system as part of Beijing's anti-corruption campaign.
"There have been problems over the past years in paroles and the reduction of penalties for criminals. Some criminals have used power or money to escape punishment, and this ... has damaged the credibility of the law enforcement and judicial organisations," Xinhua quoted the guideline as saying.
Beijing introduced paroles in 1990 to show compassion to repentant convicts or to check on their circumstances.
"Initially, the prisons could decide on paroles and the reduction of sentences. But the right to do so was returned to the courts after a revision of China's Criminal Law in 1996," Liu Renwen, a senior law researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.
Supervision of prisons is very weak and this ... leads to abuses of power
In practice, however, mainland courts simply do not have enough resources to review the individual parole cases, and as a result, continue to rely largely on the prisons for their initial reviews, Liu said. "The supervision of prisons is very weak and this inevitably leads to abuses of power," he added.