In 2014, intermediate and high people’s courts of Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu province handled a total of 5,866 juvenile and family cases, up 35.8 percent from the previous year. The number rose to 8,832 last year, an increase of 51 percent over 2014. More than 95 percent of the cases were concluded each year, meaning many conflicts and disputes were properly resolved.

While outsiders may only see changing numbers, judges with Nanjing courts have experienced an innovative transformation of juvenile and family trials over the years.

In 2013, the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court launched a reform in restructuring the juvenile and family trial courts into one comprehensive tribunal.

“The family is the smallest cell of society, and juvenile and family trials not only seek to uphold justice and fairness for each and every one of the individual cases, but also aim to lay a solid foundation for social harmony and stability,” said Hu Daocai, president of the Nanjing intermediate court.

As in many other Chinese courts, Nanjing’s juvenile trial proceedings originated from a collegiate panel set up by the criminal division of the court to hear criminal cases in which juveniles were prosecuted. Over time, its scope was expanded to cases involving juvenile victims of crime, as well as civil and administrative cases involving juveniles.

In 1988, the Nanjing intermediate court began to pilot juvenile tribunals at three district courts to explore new trial mechanisms. It made available a series of innovations, including suspended sentences, community service orders, pre-trial investigations, psychological correction orders and jurisdiction refinements.

However, the number of criminal cases in Nanjing involving juveniles has declined in the past decade, with the number falling to just under 200 in 2013. This decline made it necessary to transform the juvenile tribunal, according to Zhou Kan, chief judge of juvenile trials at the Nanjing intermediate court.

Hu, top judge of the court, was the first to propose an integration of family and juvenile matters, as they “are complementary with one another” and the restructuring would also be “conducive to straightening things out to better protect juveniles as well as promoting balanced development of various trial divisions of the court”.

According to Yao Zhenglu, a member of the trial committee of the Nanjing court, family cases accounted for about one-seventh of all civil matters heard by Nanjing’s courts every year. Although many family cases did not involve juveniles as parties, the final results had direct impact on their rights and interests, and dealing with those cases as ordinary civil cases would have risked playing down or even ignoring juveniles’ rights, Yao explained.

A study on the causes of juvenile crime and countermeasures showed that 58 percent of juvenile criminals in Nanjing were from divorced or inharmonious families. As their legal rights and interests were poorly protected, the juveniles left their homes and/or dropped out of school and eventually ran afoul of the law, according to the study.

After extensive research on comprehensive protection of juveniles, specialized trials, optimization of trial resources, judicial prevention of juvenile crimes, innovation of trial mechanisms and measures for leapfrog development in this area, the Nanjing intermediate court set up a juvenile and family tribunal in July 2013, marking the beginning of all-round protection of the rights and interests of juveniles as a disadvantaged group.

However, the integration was never meant to fully bring together juvenile and adult family issues at trial. The Nanjing court has since worked hard to promote a completely integrated and coordinated development of trials involving both perspectives.

Cases involving juveniles were less than 5 percent of those included under the restructuring. Nevertheless, focusing on maximizing protection of juveniles’ rights and interests, the Nanjing court issued a rule on trial of cases involving both juveniles and adults, as well as other documents aimed to improve protection of young people, including instructions on criminal record storage, appropriate-adult participation, pre-trial investigation and psychological intervention systems.

Nanjing has sealed all records of juveniles sentenced after 2012. Pre-trial investigations have been conducted in all juvenile cases, and hearings have been held on all cases that were heard under the previous system of separation of adult and juvenile parties.

Courts in Nanjing have made significant changes in family law matters other than those affecting juveniles. Recently, the Nanjing intermediate court heard an inheritance dispute, in which it emerged that Huang, a friend of Chen, had given spiritual consolation and daily care to the latter for a long period of time. The court ruled that companionship and spiritual consolation should be regarded as a form of support to the elderly, marking the first time that a Chinese court had endorsed such support in inheritance disputes. The ruling was expected to achieve a social effect in encouraging people to pay regular visits to their parents.

The court achieved similar “firsts” in a variety of other cases, which played a positive role in promoting improvements in legislation, upholding justice and regulating behavior of the public.

At the end of 2013, the Nanjing intermediate court set ten working rules for family trials with the aim of enabling judges to better handle family trials.They pertain to prevention of and penalties for domestic violence, property declarations, and the burden of proof to better protect disadvantaged parties.

For example, some intertwined family cases involving those issues that have the same litigants will be heard as a whole by the same court or even the same judges to avoid the possibility of one case evolving into more. It may be that this rule can lead to a fundamental solution to family conflicts and disputes.

Guided by the ten working rules, judges can give all-round and prioritized protection to disadvantaged parties, better protect family privacy, and encourage mediation to help repair family relations.