Teaching young people the law

A new education center at the Shanghai Disney Resort will teach young people about the law and help prevent crime, prosecutors in the Pudong New Area announced on Tuesday at an unveiling ceremony.

The Pudong New Area People's Procuratorate said the center will provide legal education via texts, comics, videos and games, showing typical cases from home and abroad and laws related to minors. It will also feature virtual reality technologies.

Young children can enjoy cartoons, multimedia displays and games while teenagers can use VR devices and have mock court trials.

"In 2015, we learned that Disney would have a resort in Shanghai and noticed that it would have great social influence and attract many children. So later we came up with such an idea and won the approval from leaders," said Zhang Yu, a prosecutor. Talks began with Disney's local branch.

"However, it's not an easy job. We've looked at about 10 areas in the resort but a location still couldn't be determined.”

After the procuratorate's current chief procurator Yang Yujun arrived, he supported this project and took efforts to coordinate it, which finally brought them an area at the Maxus Plaza.

Zhang told Shanghai Daily that they aimed to make learning legal knowledge as interesting as possible for young people. Prosecutors will be dispatched to the center and training young people themselves to be guides there is under consideration. 

At the ceremony, Zhang and another 21 prosecutors were appointed "legal vice principals" of the district’s 26 schools. They will serve as a bridge between the procuratorate and schools and let schools share legal education resources provided by the procuratorate, Zhang said.