Chief justice urges labor camp reform

BEIJING - China's chief justice on Wednesday urged efforts to promote the reform of the re-education camp system.

Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court, called on courts at all levels to shorten the process of hearing and concluding minor criminal cases, and promote community-based rectification in order to match up with China's reform of its "re-education-through-labor" camp system.

Good legal and social effects should be achieved by nationwide courts when hearing major sensitive cases, Zhou said, urging a cleanup of lawsuits that should have been concluded a long time ago.

He also demanded efforts to strengthen the implementation of regulations on abatement from penalty, conditional release and execution of sentence out of prison under surveillance.