A second opportunity
Young offenders are back on the right track, Zhou Wenting reports in Shanghai.
Zhao Haiming was given a choice: a job and an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, or a prison term. He chose the former and now says he is on the road to redemption.
A Shanghai court gave the 17-yearold a 17-month suspended sentence on Oct 23 for distributing pornography. But instead of staring at the walls of a cell, he now works at a bathhouse in the city’s Minhang district. He is trained and supervised in the workplace and receives regular visits from a social worker, all aimed at keeping him on the straight and narrow.
Zhao says it is working. “I’ll never break the law again,” said the teenager, who grew up in Bozhou, a rural city in neighboring Anhui province. “I feel relieved I can start afresh.”
Zhao’s second chance is part of changes nationwide to the way courts handle juveniles. Since 2003, Shanghai has established almost 300 “observation bases”, partner enterprises that offer a place to young offenders. The bathhouse in Minhang is one of them.
More than 1,700 minors have been placed at one of these bases, and as yet not one has committed another crime, with 90 percent returning to either full-time education or employment, according to the city’s prosecuting authority.
“If someone receives a two-year jail term at 18, there are decades for him or her to live after being released,” said Fan Rongqing, director of juvenile prosecutions for Shanghai People’s Procuratorate. “Proper help at this stage in their life could push them in the right direction.
“We see this project as a way to change a person’s path,” he said.
Alternatives
Zhou Haiming’s original path saw him collide with the law on May 28, when he was detained for charging people in the street to download porn onto their cellphones.
After arriving in the city in March, he found work with a courier company, earning 2,000 yuan ($320) a month, and said he had hoped to make a little extra cash with his illicit side business.
“I didn’t know it was against the law,” said the teenager, who has only an elementary-level education.
Once in the hands of the authorities, Zhao’s case was passed to prosecutors, who in July opted to send him to an observation base, the bathhouse, where he was assigned a mentor.
He is now being trained as a locker room attendant, while others in his situation have been put to work on assembly lines or as kitchen assistants, depending on the enterprise.
“Our intention is to help youngsters return to society, go back to their studies or work, after a spell of repentance and rehabilitation,” Fan said.
“There’s no need to jail juveniles who commit minor crimes,” he said. Prison is like a vat of dye, “it’s easy for people to learn new methods there to break the law, plus adult convicts can have a negative effect on the mentality of juveniles. It can make them even more hostile.”
He said when prosecutors first experimented with alternatives to detaining young offenders many were released back into society and merely vanished off the radar.
Juveniles with Shanghai hukou, or household registration, were given suspended sentences in 63 percent of cases in 2010, while for those without hukou it was closer to 15 percent, according to Shanghai High People’s Court. About 80 percent of young offenders in the city are nonnative residents.
In 2009, a professional team of social workers was placed in every Shanghai district to offer one-to-one guidance to youths that had been accused of crimes but had no guardian or fixed residence in the city. Sessions last on average three to six months before a court verdict.
Ma Lihua, a social worker with Shanghai Sunshine Community Youth Affairs Center, visits Zhao three times a week. She said they talk about his past and his plans for the future.
“Youths should be treated more leniently than adults,” she said. “The attitude of a community toward them when they are involved in difficulties determines whether a seed of resentment or love is planted in their hearts.
“The result may not unfold immediately, but it will prove a major difference after a decade or two,” she said.
One out of three juvenile offenders was given a non-custodial sentence in 2011, and the proportion was 50-50 in the first eight months of this year.
“The rate is 80 or 90 percent in some Western countries,” Fan said, “but we’ve seen a great improvement in China, which a decade ago was incarcerating more than 90 percent of young offenders.”
Beijing, Xi’an and Wuxi are among the cities that have already adopted similar approaches.
Family approach
Tens of thousands of minors are involved in crimes every year in China.
In a country where most couples have only one child due to family planning regulations, when they turn out
I’ll never break the law again. I feel relieved I can start afresh.”
ZHAO HAIMING 17-YEAR-OLD OFFENDER “If someone receives a two-year jail term at 18, there is decades for him or her to live after being released. Proper help at this stage in their life could push them in the right direction. We see this project as a way to change a person’s path.” FAN RONGQING DIRECTOR OF JUVENILE PROSECUTIONS FOR SHANGHAI PEOPLE’S PROCURATORATE “Youths should be treated more leniently than adults. The attitude of a community toward them when they are involved in difficulties determines whether a seed of resentment or love is planted in their hearts.” MA LIHUA SOCIAL WORKER FROM SHANGHAI SUNSHINE COMMUNITY YOUTH AFFAIRS CENTER
bad it can be a huge burden.
Liu Peng, also 17, was arrested in June. He had been working as a lookout for an underground gambling den in Shanghai.
“I knew the job might land me in trouble, but I’d have been disappointed if I’d left without making any money,” said the native of Chuzhou in Anhui. “I decided to quit (and return home) after receiving my first month’s salary, but I was captured before that.”
Liu’s arrest left his family in a mess, according to his mother, Kong Xiaowen. “We were a happy family and he’s my only son. The family would be destroyed if he was sent to prison,” she said.
The teenager was given a threemonth suspended prison sentence, based on the prosecution’s review of his behavior while working as a waiter at a Minhang hotel, another observation base.
“Prison can trigger opposition to society in individuals and their families, so the (observation base) approach helps to maintain stability,” said Tong Lihua, director of the Beijing Youth Legal Aid and Research Center.
Social workers are encouraged to educate parents and keep a close eye on a juvenile after he or she returns to the family home.
Shanghai police recently arrested several people for using children to help them steal.
“No child is born with a problem, it usually lies with the family and the environment they grew up in,” said Sun Yulian, a social worker in Minhang. “Sometimes we find it hard to talk to parents who show zero desire to change. But I still feel it’s meaningful, even if they only remember one sentence out of 10 I say.”
Positive effects
Legal aid experts and psychologists say Shanghai’s method of observing young offenders to help them mend their ways is a good start, but they recommend adjustments to iron out the policy.
“It needs a unique key to open each heart, and some hearts are hard to open,” Cui Lijuan, a psychology professor at East China Normal University, said in reference to the challenge for social workers. “If it was that easy to transform a person in half a year, we wouldn’t need prisons.”
She hailed the introduction of vocational training in the rehabilitation of young offenders, but insisted that continued support from trained professionals is vital to ensure they progress in the right direction.
“If someone has never had a fair chance to get an education or care, then it’s difficult for him or her to develop a conscience toward society,” she said.
Likewise, Yi Shenghua at Yingke Law Firm in Beijing urged social workers to make the most of the time they spend with the juveniles.
“They should give them guidance in the law, psychology, help steer their outlook on life,” he said. “It would be a good idea to involve more people who work or used to work with judicial departments to help this.”
As Zhao’s case suggests, if the job is done well enough, offenders themselves can go on to have a positive effect on preventing others around them from turning to crime.
The 17-year-old said he has already devoured two books on positive thinking given to him by Ma.
“If I’d ended up in prison, I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t write myself off as hopeless, accept my label as a bad guy,” he said. “But that part of my life is over.
“Now, if any of my friends ever thought of breaking the law, like I did, I’d definitely stop them. If I see others selling porn in the street, I’ll warn them, too.” (Names of the juvenile offenders have been changed on request.)