Pilot program aims to help juvenile offenders

A social-work station for adolescents opened this week in Beijing No 1 Detention Center as a pilot project to make more social workers available to juvenile lawbreakers.

The project is under the auspices of the Beijing Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, the Beijing Prison Administration Police of Beijing Public Security Bureau, and the Beijing Chaoyue Adolescents Social Work Services Agency.

The station, built in the detention center, will spare social workers the complicated procedures they usually must go through before seeing juvenile offenders. The social workers have a special office in the detention center.

Xi Xiaohua, director of Beijing Chaoyue and associate professor of Capital Normal University, said that previously, social workers had little time and limited opportunities to talk to the juveniles. “We could communicate with them once in the preliminary hearings, which usually last for seven days, and once a month with the cooperation of the local procuratorates," Xi said.

"Bailiffs need to handle complicated procedures before we could see the juveniles, but the bailiffs have a lot of other work to do, which makes the time with the juveniles quite limited," Xi added. In addition to the station in the Beijing No 1 Detention Center, another station will be built in the Haidian district detention center.

"If our work in the two detention centers proves effective, the service centers will be extended to other detention centers in Beijing," Xi said.

"While choosing some juvenile criminals as key objects for tailored help, we will build up different groups among the juvenile criminals, including a group concentrated on behavior control," Xi introduced. The station will also offer help to the parents of the juveniles, giving them lectures on how to relieve their stress.