Prosecutors take hard stance on gang crimes

Authorities also step up efforts to avoid charging the innocent with offenses

Prosecutors around China approved the arrest of 36,534 people involved in 12,345 gang-related crimes in the first half of this year.

They also filed charges against 43,063 people in 6,928 such cases in the same period, according to figures released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate on Saturday at a seminar for prosecutors in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China's Sichuan province.

SPP officials said procuratorates at all levels will be required to make the removal of the relationship networks and umbrellas protecting organized crime gangs their top priority.

The SPP will not be lenient in removing such networks and umbrellas, and if any clues which exist in procuratorial organs are found, disciplinary inspection and supervision teams will launch strict investigations to root out misconduct hiding in the shadows.

But procuratorial organs must bear in mind that prosecutors are not only prosecutors of crimes but also protectors of innocent people in line with the newly revised Law on Public Procurators, SPP Procurator-General Zhang Jun said.

In the first half of this year, procuratorial organs did not issue arrest warrants to 88,535 people as a result of insufficient evidence or people's actions failing to constitute a crime.

One notable instance occurred on March 1, when the Fuzhou procuratorate in Fujian province decided to drop a charge against a man who injured an assailant after coming to the defense of a woman.

On Dec 26, 2018, Zhao Yu saw a man pressing a young woman against the wall in her home and hitting her head. Trying to stop the man, who had broken into the woman's home, Zhao was punched twice and retaliated by kicking the assailant in the stomach, injuring him.

On Jan 4, local police detained Zhao and asked the procuratorate to approve his arrest. But on March 1, the procuratorate decided not to charge Zhao because he had acted in justifiable self-defense.

Prosecutors decided not to issue arrest warrants for 168,458 people last year, up by 15.9 percent year-on-year, and dropped charges against 34,398 people due to insufficient evidence or their actions failing to constitute a crime, a 14.1 percent increase.

They also made 58,744 written notifications to remind police not to obtain evidence through illegal means or adopt wrong coercive measures, a year-on-year increase of 22.8 percent, the SPP said.

Zhang Yan contributed to this story.