CHINA> Human Rights Progress
Full Text: National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010)
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-04-13 15:08

2) Rights of detainees

The state will improve the legislation concerning prison management and take effective measures to ensure detainees' rights and humanitarian treatment.

- The state will make efforts to improve the laws, regulations, policies and measures related to the protection of detainees' rights and humanitarian treatment.

- In accordance with the law, the state strictly carries out every procedure in the execution of criminal punishment, such as taking a convict into custody, commutation, parole, temporary serving of a sentence outside prison and release from prison. The procedures for law enforcement shall be further standardized, so as to ensure that they are rigorous and detailed, and that the legal documents and warrants provided at every stage of law enforcement are authentic, properly kept and documented in files.

- The state is improving the system of accountability, the system of publication, the system of performance evaluation and examination, and the system of investigating wrongdoing in law enforcement in prisons and detention houses; it is establishing a supervisory system and a power-restraint mechanism for law enforcement, and intensifying investigation into illegal activities committed during law enforcement and punishing those who are held accountable.

- Effective measures shall be taken to prohibit such acts as corporal punishment, abuse, insult of detainees or the extraction of confessions by torture. All interrogation rooms must impose a physical separation between detainees and interrogators. The state establishes and promotes the system of conducting a physical examination of detainees before and after an interrogation.

- The state is further improving the system of treatment for detainees. The rules regarding detainees' correspondence, meeting with people, entertainment, and family visits shall be improved. The state is improving the sanitation management system for detainees as well as their medical treatment, and promoting standardized management of detainees' life and health care. The state will pay attention to individualized education and correction of detainees, popularizing and intensifying education concerning mental health and psychological counseling. More funds will be made available to improve the environment and conditions for detainees in prisons and detention houses, and to help cover the expenses for daily supplies, overhead, the purchase and wear and tear of equipment, maintenance and other expenditures.

- The state is improving an open system of law enforcement in prisons and detention houses by making public detainees' rights as well as the law-enforcement standards and procedures to detainees, their families and society at large. Supervision is effectively carried out over law-enforcement activities in prisons and detention houses by providing complaint services(letter boxes or telephone numbers), directly meeting leaders of prisons or detention houses, or hiring public supervisors.

- The state is intensifying real-time supervision conducted by the people's procuratorate on law enforcement in prisons and detention houses. For detainees' convenience, complaint letter boxes are set up in their cells, and a detainee may meet the procurator stationed in a prison or detention house by appointment, if the former feels he has been abused and wants to make a complaint.