CHINA INTERESTED IN SERVING PRISON SENTENCES IN OPEN CONDITIONS

For the third time this year, Oslo Prison was recently able to welcome yet another important delegation from China. This time our topic was community service orders and other alternative forms of punishment.  

The office of the Norwegian Ombudsman has recently entered into a co-operation scheme together with The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SSP) in China. This is a state organization with responsibility for supervision, control and inspection of persons who have been subjected to community service orders as a form of punishment. In China today, community service orders have been implemented as a trial scheme in 18 provinces, towns and districts. But the scheme is practised very differently and arbitrarily due to the lack of a national set of rules and regulations governing all material and legal conditions of the scheme.

SSP decided therefore to send a delegation to us to gain information about Norwegian rules and regulations, and to learn from our experiences with community service orders and other alternative forms of punishment. The delegation also wished to hear about our parole and conditional release arrangements, as well as leave of absence arrangements and the use of suspended sentences.

Towards the end of October, a seminar on community service, as a form of punishment, will be held in Shanghai, where Norwegian speakers will participate.

For those of you who are particularly interested, a ‘Google’ search of The Supreme People's Procuratorate gives many hits. But a good place to start is Wikipedia.