China to deepen procuratorial reform

BEIJING - China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has unveiled a five-year plan for deepening procuratorial reform in a bid to ensure that procuratorates can fully perform their functions.

Despite remarkable progress achieved so far, there is still a way to go to comprehensively implement the judicial reform, said an unidentified official with the SPP, adding that procuratorates as a whole cannot adapt themselves to new tasks and requirements under new circumstances.

The enforcement of judicial accountability has been highlighted in the reform plan for the period between 2018 and 2022. Prosecutors should take responsibility for the cases they deal with, it noted.

The plan stressed giving full play to cases management platforms so the whole process of handling cases by prosecutors can be supervised.

It also called for efforts to improve transparency of procuratorates and strengthen public supervision over law enforcement.

The plan has also rolled out a host of measures to promote legal supervision.

The SPP will establish specialized agencies for criminal cases and implement a new mechanism to allow the same department to handle both the arrest and prosecution processes of criminal cases.

The old mechanism lowers efficiency because one department handles the arrest process and another department has to learn about the case all over again when it handles the prosecution process.