司法巡查 (sīfa xúnchá): Judicial inspections

The Supreme People's Court has sent inspection teams to seven provinces so far to find out whether lower-level court members are involved in corruption or other disciplinary violations.

However, the task of judicial inspection teams is not only to fight corruption in the lower judicial branches, but also to correct the wrong verdicts of the courts resulting from the abuse of power.

Generally the team leaders are selected from a consultancy committee of the Supreme People's Court, and most of them are former presidents of provincial-level people's courts.

When they arrive at a city, mostly the capitals of a province, the judicial inspection team members will hold talks with the local judicial staff, and publicize their contact numbers and addresses so that people can send complaints to them via various channels.

In the first round of the judicial inspections that started in 2010 and ended in 2012, the teams found 242 problems with local courts and issued 122 guidelines to correct them. Data from the second round are yet to be disclosed.