A new major step towards China’s rule of law China is to abolish performance assessment goals that set arrest and conviction rates for the police, prosecutors and courts. Hailed as a major step towards legal justice, the move could make it easier for the judicial organs to withstand demands to deliver swift convictions. The official order to end such performance targets was part of the government’s efforts to reduce the pressure for guilty verdicts. The pressure has led to a nearly 100 percent rate of convictions in criminal trials — and with that miscarriages of justice that have been exposed by overturned convictions, including one in which the defendant was executed for murder. A report from Xinhua news agency says these cases include some that were shaped by a presumption of guilt, and an emphasis stress on confessions, giving less weight to evidence, and even the use of torture to secure confessions. At a meeting on Tuesday, the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of the Communist Party, which oversees the police, prosecutors and judges, demanded that officials “firmly abolish unreasonable assessment goals for numbers of criminal detentions, arrest rates, indictment rates, and rates of guilty verdicts and case conclusions. Chinese officials have long operated under a system of economic, social and political performance goals that weigh heavily on their chances of promotion or demotion. According to the Supreme People’s Court in China, the country’s judiciary concluded criminal trials of 1.16 million defendants in 2013 and found 825 people not guilty. That indicated that 99.9 percent were found guilty, a rate higher than in countries where prosecutors and judges have more leeway in deciding how to handle cases. One consequence is that the police are often reluctant to record less serious crimes unless they are sure of arresting someone. Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has acknowledged widespread public disquiet with torture and other abuses perpetrated by the police and other law-and-order officials. In October, party leaders laid out proposals intended to end such abuses. The problem has been highlighted by a succession of convictions for murder, rape and robbery that courts belatedly concluded were based on fake evidence and confessions made under torture. It is also a major step for judicial reform following China’s decision to abolish the reeducation through labor system as part of a major effort to protect human rights. The controversial correction system, commonly known as Laojiao, began in the 1950s, usually by taking in minor offenders whose offence is not severe enough to take them to court, and detaining people for up to four years without an open trial.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 07:48:12 +0000
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