Chinese law stipulates the various civil rights not restricted by law to which a criminal is entitled during a prison term. There are specific legal provisions concerning the rights a criminal must enjoy during the entire process from initial detention to release after serving the sentence. Chinese law forbids any maltreatment of prisoners by the prison staff and prisoners have the right to file charges according to the law. The law clearly stipulates criminal sanctions for any prison staff guilty of dereliction of duty. In the reform of criminals, China operates on the principle that education is very important, attaching great importance to physical labour in addition to legal, moral, cultural and technical education to encourage criminals to stop looking at time in prison as a forced prison term and think more in terms of conscientious reform, to give up the idea of obtaining personal gain through criminal means, to form the habit of respecting other people and society in general, and to obtain the work skills needed for later employment so that they may become law-abiding citizens.
China attaches great importance to helping criminals change by means of persuasion.
Therefore, China brings the efforts of specialized state organs and society together to reform criminals. At the same time, under China's socialist system, reform of criminals is the common concern of society and receives energetic support from the public. Every sector and level of society supports and helps coordinate this work through the entire process of criminal reform, including resettlement and employment after a criminal has served his term and is released from prison. Due to the implementation of the above-mentioned principles, China has met with great success in criminal reform. It did not use capital punishment on any of the Japanese war criminals, the war criminals of the puppet Manchuria regime, the Kuomintang war criminals or on the last emperor of the feudal Qing Dynasty.