People.cn:

The whole society pays great attention to the protection of minors. The SPP set up a specialized procuratorial office in 2018. What are the developments and changes regarding its work over the past four years? As the amended Law on the Protection of Minors and the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency have been implemented, what measures will you take to better protect the minors? Thank you.

Tong Jianming:

Thank you for the questions. I have been tasked with the work at the Ninth Procuratorial Office to protect minors. So, I will answer your questions.

The Party and the country attach great importance to the healthy growth of minors. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping has made instructions on different occasions, emphasizing that "the whole of society should understand, respect, care for, and serve children, and create a sound environment for their development." The presence of procuratorial organs can be seen throughout the judicial protection of minors. Furthermore, the CPC Central Committee approved the establishment of a specialized procuratorial office for minors. This means that we have an important political duty. We've come to understand more deeply that the protection of minors is a sacred cause. What we are doing today will benefit generations to come. So, we can't stress the importance of the work strongly enough. Here I would like to brief you, using three phrases, on our work protecting minors.

The first is "two-way protection." When we handle cases, we do our best to educate, persuade, and rehabilitate juvenile offenders and care for and assist underage victims. We should protect both juvenile offenders and underage victims. That's what we call "two-way protection." For juvenile offenders with less malicious intentions and accused of minor offenses, we are prudent when making arrest and prosecution decisions and try to reduce the number of arrests. In the first half of this year, the non-arrest, non-prosecution, and conditional non-prosecution rates for juvenile crimes reached 63%, 54%, and 36%, about 29, 30, and 24 percentage points higher than the same period in 2018, respectively. The figures reflect the principle of "education, persuasion and rehabilitation" for juvenile offenders. At the same time, we should punish serious juvenile crimes without connivance. From 2018 to the first half of this year, we indicted 46,000 juvenile criminal suspects. To fully protect underage victims' legitimate rights and interests, we issued guidelines on offering assistance to them. We set up more than 1,600 one-stop case handling sites in collaboration with public security organs. The sites facilitate inquiry and evidence collection and prevent secondary harm to underage victims. 

The second is "comprehensive protection." Complex and diverse factors cause criminal cases involving juveniles, often closely related to the lack of protection of their legal rights and interests, such as civil guardianship and administrative rights. Last year, the SPP started centrally handling criminal, civil, administrative, and public interest litigation cases concerning juveniles. When handling the cases, the specialized procuratorial offices, organizations, and procurators integrate various functions to improve the quality and effectiveness of the protection for minors. For example, we found that tattoos are prevalent among juveniles involved in criminal cases and called for the prohibition of tattoos for juveniles through public interest litigation. We also submitted a special report to the leading group on protecting minors of the State Council. The leading group took it very seriously and issued guidelines on regulating underage tattooing to address the problem at the source.

The third is "six-dimensional protection." The newly revised Law on the Protection of Minors has developed a new model of protecting minors with efforts from six dimensions: family, school, society, cyberspace, government, and judicial authorities. The procuratorial organs have actively performed their duties of legal supervision and brought a "chemical reaction" to the six-dimensional protection to achieve a better effect of "one plus five is greater than six." For example, to ensure school safety, the SPP sent the No. 1 SPP proposal to the Ministry of Education (MOE) in 2018. Since then, the two departments have worked jointly to implement the proposal with local procuratorial organs and education and administrative authorities. In the first half of this year, the number of indictments for crimes related to school violence and bullying dropped by 84.6% compared with the same period of 2018. Also, we have fully implemented the mechanisms mentioned above, including mandatory reporting and employment-based criminal record checks, which developed through practice and have been incorporated into the law. By doing so, procuratorates have handled over 2,800 cases of infringement on minors that were found via a mandatory reporting mechanism. Authorities have conducted employment-based criminal record checks for over 7.4 million people engaged in industries with close contact with minors. More than 2,900 people with criminal records were removed from their posts. These measures have offered minors concrete protection by preventing many "Big Bad Wolves" from engaging in occupations that have close contact with them.

This October, the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee will hear the SPP's specific report on juvenile-related procuratorial work. Taking it as an opportunity, we will continue working with other related departments to jointly implement the Law on the Protection of Minors and the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency. We will promote integrating and implementing the six-dimensional protection to perform our duties better and help our motherland's flowers grow well. Thank you.