O
n a sultry summer day in 2012, Wang Yong realised he
didn’t have any decent clothes for his ID card photo. He
rushed into a shop and grabbed a new dark shirt, changing
in a hurry before he posed for his photo. It was two days since he’d
been released from prison, and the address on his old ID card didn’t
exist anymore.
The 50 year old had no family, no home and no income. He’d
been imprisoned for robbery in 2001. But shortly after he was freed
he handed in a provisional resettlement application to the judicial
bureau in the capital’s Chaoyang District.
In August 2012, Wang stepped into the Sunshine Halfway House
in Chaoyang District (SHHC), kicking off a six-month temporary
stay in the facility, which helps former prisoners readjust to the out-
side world. His first sight in the spacious entrance hall was a statement
from the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang Goethe: “Treat
people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them tobecome what they are capable of being.”Integration
SHHC is the first institution to provide provisional shelter and
education for ex-prisoners on the Chinese mainland. It also houses
prisoners held in the “community rectification” system that oper-
ates parallel to China’s prisons, which has been running since 2003.
SHHC had sheltered 106 just-released prisoners by the end of March
2017, who stayed for three- or six-month periods. The institution also
helped them apply for new hukou (residence permits), and arrange
basic social insurance, low-rent housing and other forms of welfare.
Li Bo, deputy director of SHHC, told ChinaReport that the institu-
tion was established against the backdrop of the mounting security
pressure of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Chaoyang District was
home to many Olympic venues and embassies and reducing recidi-
vism among offenders had become an urgent issue.Halfway House
CARing fOR CRiMinALS
Community rectification services are designed to prevent minor offenders from slipping into more
serious crime – but coordination is a problem
By Huo Siyi
Community
inmates paint
and wear Peking
Opera masks at the
Sunshine Halfway
House in Chaoyang
District, Beijing Photo by zhen hongge