Description

The high pretrial detention rate (PDT) in China’s criminal cases has long been a target of criticism by both international legal community and the domestic academics. Chinese government has been launching reforms after reforms to reduce the PDT over the past decade. However, the effects were unnoticeable until very recently. In April 2021, fewer comprehensions, cautious prosecution and detention has been officially established as a national criminal policy and listed as one of the working focuses for the year of 2021. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate has launched a six-month nationwide special campaign on the necessity examination for continuous detention, which was later extended to the end of 2022. The procuratorates at all levels were required to replace detention with alternative compulsory measures where it’s unnecessary to keep the suspects in custody. Under the influence of the national criminal policy and accompanying special campaigns, the PDT has plummeted from around 50% in 2021 to 26.7% in 2022. However, some scholars worried that the progress may not be sustainable because the reduction of the PDT was coincident with the COVID-19 pandemic during which there were not only few crimes but also few detentions due to concerns of pandemic control difficulty in detention facilities. This seminar will examine how the fewer comprehension and cautious detention policy is understood and implemented in practice, to what extent this national policy affected the reduction of PDT in criminal cases, and whether there were other contributing factors such as the policy adjustments to handle DWI crimes to cause the dramatic drop of PDT. In the year 2023, the speaker conducted a series of field research on the pretrial detention reduction across the country. Quite a few interesting empirical findings have been obtained. Meanwhile, the national legislature of China has started to amend the Criminal Procedure Law since the second half of 2023. Academic discussions around the amendment of the pretrial detention system have been active. The speaker would share with the audience the academic debates on this topic in China and her research on Reducing Pretrial Detention: The Effects and Challenges of Implementing the Fewer Comprehensions and Cautious Detention Policy in China.