NANJING, September 2 -- China will step up fight against
illegally-prolonged detention by implementing more stringent monitoring system
across the country, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP)
announced Friday.
Public supervisors are entitled to oversee the monitoring work conducted by
China's procurator offices on illegally-prolonged custody involving criminal
suspects, according to Zhang Geng, the executive deputy procurator-general of
the SPP.
"In the past, the public supervisors could only oversee illegally-prolonged
custody cases relating to white-collar crimes, " Zhang noted at an on-going
national meeting.
China introduced the system of public supervisors in August 2003, in which
procuratorate authority invites people from all walks of life to act as "public
supervisors" for better monitoring of the work of judicial departments, aiming
to ensure justice and curb wrong verdicts.
By the end of this June, 2,825 procuratorates who are experimenting the new
system have selected and appointed 20,848 public supervisors.
Zhang asked the procurator offices at various levels to trace each procedure
of the people in custody and set up relevant profiles for the reference of
public supervisors.
The supervisors should also be invited to inspect sites for detention and
carry out law enforcement checkup.
"It's a move to further establish a supervisory mechanism to prevent and
redress illegally-prolonged custody cases," Zhang said.
According to China's Criminal Procedure Law, criminal suspects can be legally
held for anywhere from 14 days to six-and-a-half-months before they must be
brought to trial.
The number of China's illegally-prolonged custody cases has dropped to a
record low in recent years.
The SPP said there were 271 suspects enduring illegally-prolonged detention
in 2005, while the figure stood at 43,438 in 2002. And the SPP received 85
hot-line reports in 2005 on extended custody, which provided important clues for
tracking down illegally-prolonged custody, down 1,991 from the year of 2002.
So far, all of the 271 cases discovered last year have been redressed.
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