Posted on 08/12/2003 4:49:22 PM PDT by FreepForever
Caption: Making them state-funded may curb graft and improve inmates' labour conditions
The mainland is experimenting with reform of its controversial penal system by severing prisons from their business arms.
The aim is to curb corruption and improve prisoners' living conditions.
Prisons chosen for the experiment, which starts next month, will be state-funded, freeing them of the need to run profit-driven businesses in which inmates often work long hours in dangerous conditions - frequently without pay.
Prisons in Heilongjiang, Jiangxi, Hubei and Shaanxi provinces and the Shanghai and Chongqing municipalities will begin the experiment on September 1.
They will no longer receive income from their factories and farms. Instead, their operating costs will be met in full by the central and provincial governments.
Government funding now covers only part of the costs of running prisons, with their business arms covering the rest.
Under the reform, the business units affiliated to prisons will be grouped under new umbrella companies controlled by the provincial prison authorities. While these companies will be free of the responsibility of financing the prisons, they will still have to provide manual work for prisoners.
"Prison companies are important elements to correct prisoners' [behaviour]," Minister of Justice Zhang Fusen was quoted by the Legal Daily yesterday as saying at a conference last week.
"Their major mission is to provide job vacancies and services for the correction of prisoners. They must not pursue pure economic profits and make big money while departing from their chief purpose - correction," the minister said. China's prison law stipulates that all healthy prisoners must perform manual work.
Prison authority officials said prison officers were often distracted from the management of their institutions because they were preoccupied with running businesses such as shoe-making, manufacturing car number plates, cement production, farms and even quarries.
Some of these companies generated huge profit for the prison authorities while others were stricken with heavy debts because of mismanagement.
But in general they provide an important source of funding, contributing several billion yuan to the prison system last year.
State and provincial governments will have to inject more than a billion yuan (HK$942 million) this year to support the pilot projects, and a prison official said it would cost an extra 4 billion yuan a year if the reform was extended to the entire country. The state now provides more than half of prisons' funding.
Prisons in China have long attracted criticism from overseas groups and governments for their poor record on human rights. Prisoners usually work in poor conditions and must bear long hours for minimal wages, or none at all.
While labour camps - which drew the fiercest criticism - were abolished in the late 1990s, many were turned into prisons.
Officials said the reform would improve inmates' working conditions. "After the reform, inmates will no longer be forced to undertake dangerous tasks. For example, factories involving contact with lethal material or quarries will have to be shut," one said.
"The primary aim for these companies is to correct prisoners through manual work and give them vocational training before they return to society."
An official source said the reform was triggered not by international pressure but by the uncovering of serious corruption in the prison system in recent years, which had alarmed state leaders and prompted "drastic measures". The cases had never been reported by state media, he added.
Two previous attempts to sever business from prisons in the 1990s failed because they could not function without funds from their business arms.
Under the reform, revenue generated from prison labour will be set aside to improve inmates' working conditions and make the new province-wide business units more competitive, a prison official said. They will also enjoy tax concessions and could be awarded government contracts.
Human rights groups yesterday said it would take time to see if the reform would benefit prisoners.
A spokesman for Amnesty International said it could prove a positive step if implemented correctly. But he said independent supervision of prison managers was needed to curb abuses of prisoners.
"The bottom line is how the prisoners will be treated and will their working conditions improve?" the spokesman said.
Nicholas Becquelin, research director of Human Rights in China, said: "A reform package is not enough. It has to be followed by concrete implementation."
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