Judicial Assistants' Role Key to Social HarmonyA senior official yesterday urged the nation's judicial assistants to work harder to continue contributing to a safer society, according to the English-language newspaper China Daily.State Councillor Luo Gan told the judicial assistants and officials at a national conference in Beijing to enhance their roles of mediating neighbourhood disputes, helping those released from prisons or reeducation-through-labour centres readjust to society and preventing and reducing repeated crimes. Luo stressed the importance of building up the competence of judicial assistants, saying that they should be strict in law enforcement and be upright in their own personal conduct. He also encouraged the judicial assistants to provide quality service for those seeking legal advice. Luo's remarks followed the Ministry of Justice's honouring of 100 judicial offices and 300 judicial assistants across the country for their outstanding performance. Judicial assistants are officials in county and township governments and neighbourhoods whose responsibilities include solving disputes and preventing them from escalating into crimes, spreading legal knowledge and assisting the grass-roots governments in managing the local affairs. China had more than 40,000 judicial offices at the end of 2000, with a total of nearly 95,000 staff, government statistics show. In the last five years, they resolved 5.3 million disputes and gave some 2.6 million lectures on legal knowledge, according to ministry figures. Minister of Justice Zhang Fusen describing the enhanced role of judicial assistants as "a requirement of safeguarding social security and stability," called for a network to spread legal knowledge to the public. Zhang also echoed Luo in saying that judicial assistants should join the ongoing crackdown against gang crime, violent crime and crime in the economic sector, stressing that education on the law can help prevent wrongdoing. |
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