Guangdong Prison Launches WeChat Account For Inmates' Families

By Niam Seet Wei BEIJING, April 9 (Bernama) -- The prison service in South China's Guangdong province has opened a public WeChat account as a communication channel to enable relatives of inmates to better understand life behind bars. The Wechat account, named 'Guangdong Prison' is seen as the first of its kind on Chinese mainland. By communicating with prison officers on Wechat, the family members could obtain information of the inmates, including their life, work, health condition, and even the amount of pocket money which the inmates owned, reported China Daily, quoting a statement released by the Guangdong Prison Administrative Bureau as saying. So far, more than 1,000 users had registered with the account and posted more than 170 messages and comments since the start of trial operations, a week ago, it said. The statement said the launch of the Wechat account was part of the Guangdong provincial government's efforts to make the prison system more transparent, with more than 20 million yuan (US$3.2 million) invested for that purpose. The introduction of the WeChat account was an example to show how Internet technology could improve the prisons operating system, Peng Peng, a senior researcher at the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences was quoted as saying. "It will help to protect human rights and other legal rights and interests of the inmates." -- BERNAMA