(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-03 06:58

It is unfair and useless for a police bureau to punish undisciplined policemen according to a certain percentage set in advance, says an article in Beijing News. The following is an excerpt:

The police bureau of Changchun, Jilin province, is determined to take measures to improve the discipline of the police force. It is a good thing, but one of the measures has attracted public concern.

Only 1 percent of the entire police force will at year's end be picked up as examples of poor discipline and sacked if they cannot improve themselves. Why 1 percent and not 2 or 0.1 percent? The bureau has not explained. This definitive figure concerns real people who are likely to lose their jobs.

How can senior staff at the police bureau guarantee that 1 percent is the right figure when taking into account the number of policemen with poor records?

Fair punishment, in the disciplinary or legal sense, cannot be carried out by a percentage of the population. Instead, punishment should be based on objective standards that have been previously tried and tested.

All those who have failed in their duties, no matter how large the number, should be punished. Only in this way can justice be seen to have been done.

But in the past several decades, a poor method of administration has taken shape in some places where the percentage of people to be punished has been prescribed in advance. Laws and regulations have not worked and of course objective standards to measure behavior does not exist.

In some areas what really worked depended on the likes and dislikes of the initiators and organizers.

But this way of solving problems is not right because it is unfair. It does not measure the performance of a policeman according to objective standards.

(China Daily 03/03/2008 page4)