A teacher writes on the blackboard keywords such as "Handan incident, bullying, bullying, left-behind children" and talks about the recent murder of a junior high school student in Handan. The eight big red characters posted above the blackboard, "Do things seriously and be honest" are particularly eye-catching. There were about 20 students in the classroom, who looked very old and wore uniform blue uniforms. Two uniformed people, known as "instructors" or "chaperones," stand in the back row of the classroom, and are responsible for responding to emergencies.
On March 22, this reporter saw such a scene at a specialized school in a county-level city in northern China. Specialized schools refer to places for the education and correction of "minors who are not subject to criminal punishment because they are under the legal age of criminal responsibility", and the age of the students is generally minors who have reached the age of 12.
Recently, juvenile delinquency cases have frequently attracted attention. A 13-year-old boy in Yangshan County, Qingyuan City, sexually assaulted an 8-year-old girl, but because he was under the age of 14, the police did not file a case in accordance with the law, but sent her to a specialized school.
What kind of people will enter vocational schools, what will be taught in vocational schools, and who will decide when these people will come out?
Who decides who will go to a vocational school?
The above-mentioned specialized school in a county-level city in the north began operation in November 2022. The school is jointly managed by the municipal education department and the public security department, with a "education principal" and a "public security principal", and adopts closed militarized management.
Wang Hai (pseudonym), the school's public security principal, is the deputy director of the political department of the local public security bureau and has been working at the school for a long time. Wang Hai, who has been a criminal police officer for many years, told China News Weekly that like other cities, there have been cases in their city where minors have been caught stealing and fighting and have been caught by the public security organs, and because of their age, the public security organs have made a decision to punish them but cannot implement them, so they have to ask their guardians to take them away. This also leads to a vicious circle of "arrested, arrested, and released", which is a headache for the police.
"Some minors even play side balls. For example, they knew that by the age of 16, they would be criminally liable if they were caught stealing, so they had no fear of theft until then. Wang Hai said.
With these considerations in mind, the school was put into operation. The start-up capital of 16 million yuan is funded by the municipal finance. Wang Hai said that within three months of the start of the school year, there were no cases of juvenile public security in the city for more than 60 consecutive days. He believes that the establishment of this school has a great deterrent effect.
The predecessor of the vocational school was the work-study school. In the 50s of the last century, in order to save some minor delinquents and prevent them from embarking on the path of more serious crimes, work-study schools (half-day work, half-day study of political theory and culture) were established.
According to the data, the first work-study school in the mainland, the Beijing Work-Study School, was established in July 1955, with iron and wood factories, farmland, and breeding farms, and students worked two days a week. The curriculum and teaching materials are roughly the same as those of ordinary middle schools, and students spend more time studying than working.
Yuan Ningning, deputy director of the Juvenile Affairs Governance and Legal Research Base of China University of Political Science and Law, told reporters that with the progress of the rule of law and the stigma of work-study schools by the outside world, when the Law on the Protection of Minors was amended in 2012, "work-study schools" were changed to "specialized schools".
What kind of students are sent to vocational schools?
A 14-year-old boy who was a student at the vocational school for six months for participating in a group fight and hitting a police officer with a bicycle, and a 16-year-old boy who was sent to the vocational school in September last year after stealing an electric car and breaking open the security window of a cigarette shop.
In general, Yuan Ningning said, these minors must have serious bad behavior before they can enter vocational schools. What constitutes "serious misconduct" is also clearly defined in the law.
The Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency clearly defines serious negative conduct as defined by the Criminal Law and not subject to criminal punishment because of the legal age of criminal responsibility, as well as acts that seriously endanger society. Specifically, it includes nine types of situations, such as gangs fighting, chasing or intercepting others, forcibly taking or arbitrarily destroying or occupying public or private property, illegally carrying firearms, ammunition, crossbows, daggers, and other controlled instruments prescribed by the state, beating, insulting, intimidating, or intentionally harming others' bodies, and stealing, looting, snatching, or intentionally damaging public or private property.
Yuan Ningning emphasized that it does not mean that if you have serious bad behavior, you will definitely be sent to a vocational school. According to the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency, if a minor commits an act that seriously endangers society, the circumstances are heinous or causes serious consequences, or if he or she commits an act that seriously endangers society many times, he or she may be sent to a specialized school only after being assessed and approved by the Specialized Education Guidance Committee.
According to the law, the Specialized Education Steering Committee is composed of units such as education, civil affairs, finance, human resources and social security, public security, judicial administration, people's procuratorates, people's courts, Communist Youth League, women's federations, working committees for the care of the next generation, specialized schools, and other units, as well as lawyers, social workers, and other personnel, to study and determine the teaching, management, and other related work of specialized schools.
At these specialized schools, students are mainly minors who have been caught by the police for theft, fighting, etc. Among them, more than 90% of them are left-behind children in rural areas and children from troubled families. At present, the school has a total of 48 students, including 40 boys and 8 girls, the youngest is 12 years old and the oldest is 17 years old, divided into 3 classes.
Among them, one student's sin was more serious in nature. Zhang Jiajia (pseudonym), a 15-year-old boy, was born in a rural area in another county in the same province and has five siblings. He said that he dropped out of school in the fourth grade of primary school, and began stealing at the age of 10.
When he was 12 years old, he suspected that an old man had taken a watch because of the loss of a watch. According to his recollection, when he went to ask for it, the other party refused to give it and scolded him. In order to teach the other party a lesson, he set fire to the old man's house. When the fire grew, he became scared and called the police, but the old man was still killed in the fire.
After some time, Zhang Jiajia left the detention center and was caught by the police for theft. At the end of 2023, the procuratorate recommended that he be sent to this specialized school for one year of education and corrections.
Yuan Ningning said in connection with his own research and investigation that from a national point of view, there are two kinds of students in specialized schools: one is the "home student" who "applies to be sent," and the parents and other guardians of the minor or the school where they belong submit an application; and the other is the "police student" who is "forcibly sent," and the education department and the public security organs and procuratorial organs make a decision in accordance with the law.
In the above-mentioned vocational schools, there are only police students. Wang Hai said that a mother once called the police to say that the child's father had gone out to work, and she could not discipline the child, and sometimes the child would beat her if he did not like it, and she wanted to spend money to send the child to a specialized school, but the school could only refuse. "According to the regulations, police delivery students and home delivery students should be managed separately. The conditions of our school are limited, and we cannot accept students from home for the time being. ”
A private vocational school in Yueyang, Hunan Province, has both types of students. The staff of the school's admissions office told reporters that the school has more than 600 students, including more than 500 students sent to their families, and less than 100 are police students.
Currently, the specialized schools in the northern regions mentioned above do not charge any fees to students. The admissions office of Yueyang City's private vocational schools said that the school's annual tuition fee for sending students is 43,100 yuan, and some counties and municipalities in Yueyang City have signed agreements with the school authorities, and about half of the tuition fees for such students are covered by the local government, while police students need to pay about 1,000 yuan a month for living expenses.
As for how long students should be in school and what will be used to determine when they can leave school, Wang Hai told reporters that it is mainly determined by the nature and severity of the problems they are involved in and the number of crimes they have committed. The minimum is 3 months, and the current maximum is 1 year and 9 months.
"The police draw up a preliminary opinion recommending how long the child should be in school, and then the school submits the opinion to the Specialized Education Steering Committee. Depending on the nature of the case, the Committee may adjust the length of time. Therefore, it is up to the committee to decide the final duration. Wang Hai said.
How is education and correction?
Another core question of concern is what exactly is taught in vocational schools.
Students at the vocational school in the northern region said they got up at 6:30 a.m. every morning, washed up, cleaned up housekeeping, ran drills, ate breakfast, and then went to the classroom for four classes. A two-hour lunch break after lunch and four classes in the afternoon. In these classes, there are daily physical training sessions (running, basketball, etc.). After dinner, there is also evening self-study, and go to bed at 10 o'clock in the evening. Weekends are no exception. During the school day, they are not allowed to make phone calls, they are not allowed to use the Internet, and in order to facilitate communication, walkie-talkies are installed in the dormitory.
At present, there are 14 teachers in the school, all of whom have been transferred from other schools by the Ministry of Education. There are 16 courses, including culture, physical education, calligraphy, music, art, traditional etiquette, etc.
The school's education principal, Li Tao (pseudonym), once served as the leader of a central school in the city. Li Tao told reporters that most of the school's students are of compulsory education age, so they need to take compulsory education courses, but when teaching, it was found that many of them dropped out of primary school before finishing primary school.
"We touched the bottom once and found that although some children are in junior high school, they have failed math problems in the third grade of primary school, cannot memorize multiplication formulas, and cannot write 26 letters in English. We had to start with the basics. Li Tao said.
In fact, there are differences in cultural education and correctional measures in different vocational schools. Zhang Jing, executive director of the Chinese Society of Criminology and professor of law at Beijing University of Technology, has long been engaged in research on the prevention of juvenile delinquency. In an interview, he said: At present, judging from the nature of running schools, specialized schools on the mainland are divided into public and private, and from the perspective of leading units, there are education departments, procuratorates, and public security departments. Because there are no unified guidelines, local governments are trying to find themselves when opening vocational schools.
The staff of the admissions office of the aforementioned Yueyang Private Vocational School said that the school's freshmen will receive psychological correction and military training in the first month, and then transfer to normal cultural classes, but there will still be military training every morning and evening. "We adopt a militarized closed management, all year round, even during the Spring Festival, if it is not for the special request of parents, students will also study in school. ”
The staff member also said that the school's teachers are divided into two categories, one is the public teachers sent by the Yueyang City Education Department, and the other is the teachers recruited by the school itself. The cultural classes in schools are the same as in the compulsory education stage, and students of high school age receive vocational higher education, with specializations in e-commerce and tourism.
In addition to cultural education, behavior correction is also the main responsibility of vocational schools.
When the reporter visited the specialized school in a county-level city in the north, he noticed that the school was equipped with a lot of cameras, and the monitoring scope covered corridors, dormitories, classrooms, parking lots, playgrounds and other areas, and it could be said that there were almost no dead ends. One-way see-through glass is installed between the dormitory and the student dormitory for the escort to facilitate the escort to see the student's every move and intervene in time if they have abnormal behavior.
Li Tao said that when new students enter the school, they have a quantitative score of 100 points, and personal housekeeping, civilized etiquette, and classroom discipline will be linked to the score. "Good performance can add points, otherwise you will lose points. For example, if you scold someone once, you will be deducted 5 points if you are found. Each month, the school publishes the respective scores for that month and mentions the reasons for the extra or demerit points. If you score below 90 points, you may postpone your graduation. ”
If a student performs well, the school can prepare a report and allow him or her to graduate early after being evaluated and approved by the Specialized Education Guidance Committee. Wang Hai said that so far, there have been no students who have postponed their graduation, but there have been cases of early graduation.
For example, he said, in October 2023, the school's basketball team participated in the city's primary and secondary school students' sports meeting and won the first place in the middle school boys' basketball. One of the students was the main defender, who had to receive a year and three months of education at school because of the fight, and because of the obvious progress in all aspects, he graduated a week early after the extra points.
Zhang Jing is currently the honorary principal of a vocational school in Henan Province, under his suggestion, the vocational school through psychological scale measurement and interviews, the students are divided into four types, the most typical of which is the social wrongdoer, which is also the most common type of criminology, because of the social environment, including the family environment, the school environment and the poor environment of making friends, "to find a way to change their guardians, the school's education methods, change their friendship environment." For example, in vocational schools, it is necessary to establish an outreach department and a family education counseling center".
Li Hongbo, director of the Juvenile Affairs Governance and Legal Research Base of China University of Political Science and Law, also told reporters that these students had caused harm to others before entering the school, and some of them were even more serious injuries, so the relatively closed management measures adopted by the specialized school were also to prevent them from harming again when they were in school. However, vocational schools are not juvenile detention centers but schools, and these students are not "juvenile delinquents" but students. He found that from a number of cases, many students in vocational schools are left-behind children or grew up in single-parent families, indicating that there is a relationship between their path of breaking the law and committing crimes and their growth environment. Vocational schools should facilitate the visits of these students' parents, other guardians, relatives, etc., so that students can feel affection, which can also play a role in probation.
For example, Wang Hai said that when Zhang Jiajia first came to the vocational school, he did not communicate with people much, and often called himself "Lao Tzu". "One time in PE class, I noticed that he was shooting well and I complimented him. He was very happy, and he was very active in tidying up housekeeping and other aspects after that. His parents had visited him twice, and they also felt that the child had changed a lot. ”
Zhang Jing was deeply impressed by the "Child Independence Support Facility", a Japanese aid organization for troubled children, where young vicious violent offenders are locked up in "locked houses" and deprived of their freedom. The school treats them as "patients" with developmental disabilities, and they are counseled and treated by professionals, and these students can be taken home by their guardians on weekends for vacation.
However, after education and correctional treatment, the question that the outside world is most concerned about is, whether the specialized schools will be effective, and whether there will be any changes in them when they return to society? Yuan Ningning said that the specialized schools will see if there is any recurrence of illegal or criminal behavior in the form of telephone return visits or home visits within a certain period of time after graduation (the period specified by each school is different, but generally six months to two years).
From 2016 to 2019, the research team of China University of Political Science and Law inspected 22 specialized schools across the country and found that the average success rate of juvenile delinquents was more than 90%.
Wang Hai said that their school's return visits to graduates were followed until they were 18 years old, that is, until they became adults. As a vocational school, they cannot be held accountable for life, and students should be held accountable for their actions when they become adults. "Since the establishment of the school, there have been 91 graduates, and through tracking, there have been no graduates who have broken the law again. ”
Of course, Yuan Ningning also pointed out that "vocational schools cannot guarantee that they will not change after graduation. After returning to society and family, if the guardian still neglects them, there is a possibility that they will break the law again."
Wang Hai also found that some graduates were still on the verge of breaking the law, and he was also worried that they would return to their old ways. "So, we also considered whether the minimum study period of 3 months was a bit too short. ”
It is worth noting that while educating minors, punishment measures in accordance with the law cannot be missing. On March 1 this year, the Supreme People's Procuratorate also made it clear that "juveniles who commit serious crimes, are of a heinous nature, and do not want to repent, will be punished in accordance with the law, and they will be punished severely."
In a specialized school in a county-level city in the north, students organize housekeeping. Photographer/Reporter Zhou Qunfeng
Multiple questions to be answered
The data shows that in recent years, the number of juvenile crimes in the mainland has still been on the rise. From 2020 to 2023, procuratorial organs accepted, reviewed, and prosecuted 55,000, 74,000, 79,000, and 97,000 juvenile offenders.
Against this backdrop, calls for the establishment of vocational schools have also been raised from time to time.
On March 22, according to the Supreme People's Procuratorate, Ying Yong, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Procurator General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, emphasized that it is necessary to actively coordinate and promote the construction of specialized schools, improve the hierarchical intervention mechanism for juvenile offenders, increase the intensity of education and correction, and work with all parties to resolutely curb the high incidence of juvenile crime.
Yuan Ningning told reporters that the number of specialized schools on the mainland is insufficient and unevenly distributed. At present, there are more than 200 specialized schools in the country, of which seven provinces, including Zhejiang and Qinghai, do not have specialized schools, and the rest of the provinces have only one or two, while every prefecture and city in Guizhou has them.
In a report in the Procuratorate Daily, Zhang Hanyu, a second-level senior prosecutor at the Ninth Procuratorate of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said that in the past, the Criminal Law stipulated that "if a person is not criminally punished because he is under the age of 16, his parents or guardians shall be ordered to discipline him" and that "when necessary, he may also be taken into custody by the government." In 2019, the custody and re-education system was abolished, and the newly revised Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency changed the "custody and reeducation" measure to a specialized correctional education. In practice, juveniles who have reached the age of 12 but are not yet 14 years old and should have been sent to specialized schools for specialized correctional education when the Supreme People's Procuratorate does not approve prosecution, but there is "no school to go to" because the number of existing specialized schools is too small.
Zhang Hanyu believes that at present, the steering committees for specialized education in many places have not yet been established, which has affected the construction of specialized schools to a certain extent. Zhang Jing also said that one of the problems facing us now is that the education department should take the lead in preparing for the establishment of specialized schools, but now the education departments generally pay more attention to the admission rate and lack motivation for the preparation of vocational schools.
In fact, Yuan Ningning also believes that vocational schools have more funds than other ordinary schools and need more financial support. Therefore, local education funds can be appropriately tilted towards specialized schools.
In addition, the quality of teachers in such schools needs to be improved. According to media analysis, the teaching difficulty of vocational schools is significantly higher than that of ordinary schools. Teachers in specialized schools not only have to serve as subject teachers, but also serve as 24-hour discipline duty for students, in which they play multiple roles such as "educators, managers, and supervisors", and also take into account the life management of students' "eating, drinking, and lazing" and timely psychological counseling for students, and concurrently serve as psychological counselors, all of whom face varying degrees of pressure.
Zhang Jing likened vocational schools to a protective barrier for juveniles sliding down the road to criminal conviction as part of building a social defense system. "The prevention of juvenile delinquency is a comprehensive social system, and in the past, many primary and secondary schools attached great importance to students' academic performance, grasped the promotion rate, and neglected the management of problem students, and this state must be changed. The construction of a legal and ethical education system in primary and secondary schools is also an important part of our social defense system. ”
A number of respondents also cited the lack of connection between vocational schools and the law.
Zhang Jing believes that the fact that the Specialized Education Steering Committee sends some minors to specialized schools after evaluation means that their personal freedom is restricted. In the context of such a trial procedure without a court, whether the parties have the right to appeal, whether the special education guidance committee has compulsory functions, and whether it involves administrative violations also need to be further studied and explored in the future. In addition, in the context of the abolition of the custody and correctional system, it is easy for the public security organs to intervene and forcibly send such minors to specialized schools, which can easily give the impression of repeating the mistakes of the past. Therefore, it is necessary for the relevant state departments to issue guidelines to solve procedural problems and achieve the combination of procedural justice and substantive justice.
The vocational school where Zhang Jing is the honorary principal will inform the guardian to sign the informed consent form when accepting new students, indicating that the child's guardian will voluntarily send them to the vocational school, so as to avoid problems such as procedural violations.
It is worth noting that, according to the provisions, after the "Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency" makes provisions on special correctional education, the detailed rules should be completed within one year, and it has been nearly three years now, and the relevant detailed rules have not yet been made. Li Hongbo said that this shows that the work is difficult.
Li Hongbo told reporters that at present, the relevant departments are carrying out research and demonstration on the top-level system of management of specialized schools. "If it goes well, after the rules and regulations are introduced this year, the relevant management will be unified. ”
(Source: China News Weekly)