Great Leap Forward
During the Great Leap Forward, the number of arrests, prosecutions, and convictions increased as the police dispensed justice "on the spot" for even minor offenses. Still, the excesses of the Great Leap Forward were milder than those of the 1949-52 period, when many of those arrested were summarily executed. Persons found guilty during the Great Leap Forward were regarded as educable. After 1960, during a brief period of ascendancy of the political moderates, there was some emphasis on rebuilding the judicial sector, but the Cultural Revolution nullified most of the progress that had been made under the 1954 state constitution.