Lawyers calling for reform of laojiao system
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E-mail China Daily, August 16, 2012
The letter came amid a storm of criticism that arose after the mother of a rape victim was made to undergo laojiao for repeatedly petitioning authorities.
Tang Hui, 39, was accused of "seriously disturbing the social order and exerting a negative impact on society" and sent on Aug 2 to a laojiao center in Hunan province’s Yongzhou to serve an 18-month sentence.
Tang had accused the city police of falsifying evidence in order to reduce the sentences handed down to those who were responsible for the kidnap, rape and forced prostitution of her daughter, who was 11 years old when the crimes occurred.
The mother was released on Friday out of consideration for the fact that "her 17-year-old daughter is still a minor and requires her mother’s care", according to a provincial publicity department statement.
The case outraged the public and prompted more than 700,000 posts on Sina Weibo, a popular micro-blogging service in China. Most of the messages expressed sympathy for her and called for justice to be served.
The discussion reinvigorated a debate about various proposed changes to the laojiao system that lawmakers have discussed at annual meetings of National People’s Congress in the past several years.
Ying Yong, president of Shanghai High People’s Court, is one of them.
He noted in a proposal submitted during this year’s NPC session, held in March in Beijing, that the system has contributed greatly to social order and improved economic development. Even so, the country finds itself amid different circumstances than were present 50 years ago and has established a legal system. Laojiao should therefore be modified, he said.
Because the penalties under laojiao can exceed even the six-month minimum penalty for criminal offenses, Ying said, that undermines the notion that laojiao is imposed on suspects whose deeds have been not serious enough to constitute crimes.
He said the system should have been modified after the Administrative Coercion Law went into effect in 2012.
That law, which regulates administrative power and protects civil rights, lists several compulsory measures that administrative organs can take and that can lead to people losing their freedom. Laojiao is not one of them.
Ying called for a quick adoption of a draft law that pertains to the correction of illegal acts and that has been on the NPC’s annual legislative agenda since 2005. Many believe the measure will be more lenient toward the legal rights of juvenile offenders and do more to protect them.
It has yet to be submitted to the top legislature to be read.
In 2007, the NPC Standing Committee said there are "lots of disagreements".
A large one concerns which government department should be in charge of laojiao centers and which has the right to impose such a punishment on a person, Chen Sixi, deputy director of the NPC Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee, said in a previous interview.
One compromise, he said, could entail setting up a "relatively independent but specialized" institution to bring more social resources into the process.
Legal Daily, a newspaper affiliated to the Ministry of Justice, quoted a Ministry of Justice statement as saying laojiao had been used to punish offenders in 580,000 cases related to drug abuse by 2005. Those made up more than half of the cases that resulted in laojiao penalties.
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