Families benefiting from judicial relief

More victims have received national judicial relief in the past three years, according to a white paper released by Jing’an District procuratorate on Wednesday.

As of August, 30 families in the district cases had been helped by judicial authorities with over 410,000 yuan (US$60,600) since 2018. Among them, 16 families were helped this year, receiving an average of 194,000 yuan in salvage money.

The victims, living in poverty and unable to get compensation through litigation, were involved in intentional injury cases, sexual assault, fraud and larceny.

Most cases were related to juvenile victims, accounting for 60 percent, followed by cases involving people over 60 years old (16.7 percent).

The procuratorate also provided psychological counseling services, especially for minors involved in sexual assault, and remote services during the pandemic, said Cao Jian, deputy procurator general of the procuratorate.

Because of the pandemic, some victims could not come to the city so the authority guided them to apply for judicial relief by phone and let them know the result via video calls, he said.

It also pays return visits to victims and cooperates with other authorities, such as the civil affairs authorities and their neighborhood committee, to help those families after trials, he added.

“Due to the lack of the understanding about judicial relief, over 50 percent of victims haven’t read the notification of rights carefully, which is issued by the procuratorate before the trial and contains information about the judicial relief,” procurator Song Xianlin said. "So they haven’t applied for it on their own initiative.

“It is necessary for the procuratorate to proactively find the victims who can be helped via the national judicial relief and guide them for the application,” she added.