All this is meant to make the wards more attractive and to help the prisoners build healthy and virtuous inner lives since a psychological therapy was introduced in Chinese jails in 1989.

Juvenile rehabilitation centers in Beijing now celebrate Thursday as their psychology day by giving psychology lessons to the minor offenders or allow them to listen to music or entertain themselves with karaoke, in an effort to free the inmates' from mental stress.

Juvenile rehabilitation centers and female jails permit inmates to hang a photograph of the relative they respect most to keep them aware of family love. Their meetings with relatives are arranged individually depending on their behavior, and include cohabitation meetings, meal-time meetings and telephone communication.

A man who had been jailed five times for repeated robbery recently received a penalty reduction and was released ahead of time after receiving psychological treatment and acting positively in a jail in suburban Beijing.

Statistics show over 97 percent of inmates no longer offend after being reformed in Beijing jails and released.

However, Luo Dahua, a criminal psychologist and a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, said, "We can not make too much of psychological therapy, since it is a part of the whole which includes education through labor, philosophy education and penology to reform criminals."

(People's Daily January 8, 2002)