The judiciary will hand down more non-imprisonment penalties to minor criminals, but it will be cautious to prevent the abuse of judicial power, the country's chief judge said yesterday in Beijing.

The non-imprisonment penalty has not been applied fully to minor lawbreakers, especially juveniles, in the past five years, Wang Shengjun, chief of the Supreme People's Court, said in his report to the 5th session of the 11th National People's Congress Standing Committee.

"We will make optimum use of non-imprisonment penalties to rehabilitate criminals in society," Wang said.

Non-imprisonment penalty, commonly known as "community correction" in China, refers to out-of-prison correction program for minor lawbreakers jailed for three years or less.

Non-imprisonment penalty includes fine, compensation, asset confiscation, restriction of rights and community service. But for historical reasons such a program has not been properly practiced in China.

The out-of-prison correction program has been applied only to a quarter (1.07 million) of the sentenced criminals in the past five years, though the number of convicts getting such punishment has risen with each passing year, according to Supreme People's Court figures.

The practice, however, has proved successful, the Supreme Court said, because the second-crime rate of correctional convicts was just over 1 percent last year, 6 percent lower than those committed by jailed criminals.

"Punishments meted out to criminals should have the effects of the rule of law and social impact both," Li Qihong, vice-head of the Miyang county people's court in Henan, said.

In the juvenile division of Li's court, about 80 percent of the more than 800 convicts have been given non-jail penalties since 1988.

"And none of them has committed a second crime," Li said.

But Wang warned against the abuse of the system, meant only for minor lawbreakers.

"From the point of punishment and maintenance of stability, economic crimes including corruption, bribery and other official crimes should be dealt with non-jail penalties correctly, suitably and strictly according to the law," he said.

"Many cases have not been handled with the strictness of law," Wang said.

And many judges did not apply the non-jail penalty because they did not have full knowledge of the procedure, posing a challenge to the law enforcement process, he said.

Fewer and fewer defendants are hiring lawyers these days, he said, posing a big problem for the judiciary department.

The country's courts have handled 4.24 million cases since 2003, and punished 4.18 million criminals.

(China Daily October 27, 2008)