Website helps ex-cons find jobs

Community corrections aided nearly 600,000 get work in 2010

Sun Guiming, an ex-convict, could hardly contain his excitement at landing a job on Monday.

Released in November, after serving 17 years in prison, the 34-year-old signed a contract with an ocean transportation company and will be sent overseas to help with salvage and hauling.

Nine other former inmates, from Shanxi and Shandong provinces and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, also secured jobs with the shipping company.

The 10 ex-convicts are among the first group to receive assistance from a government-funded program by the Education Development Center under China National Committee for the Well-being of the Youth, which aims to help millions of former prisoners like Sun to find jobs and better re-enter society.

"While I was serving time in jail, I never imagined I would ever find a job," said Sun, who was convicted of murder at the age of 17, adding that the four-month job hunt was a memory "too bitter to bear".

"I was very young when I killed a man on impulse. I didn't know what I could do and was afraid that nobody would want to hire me."

When the job search seemed hopeless, Sun met Wang Jie, a man from North China's Shanxi province, who started a website in 2005 to help ex-inmates find work.

Wang, owner of a camera store, developed the website after experiencing the difficulty of helping his classmate, a former prisoner, find a job. Wang said the website has helped at least 1,200 former prisoners get a job.

"On the website, I publish the information on people who have been released and companies' requirements, and hope it can serve as a bridge," he said.

He said that in addition to the website, former prisoners look for assistance from the government.

Facing a rising trend former inmates returning to jail, the government has been putting more resources into helping them with vocational training and psychological assistance in local communities.

Community correction, as it is called, helped nearly 600,000 people re-enter society in 2010, according to the Ministry of Justice. They include people who completed their sentences in 2010, people released on probation and those who committed minor offenses that were exempted from criminal punishment.

About 390,000 inmates nationwide were released from jail in 2010, and 1.65 million people are serving time in 678 prisons, according to the ministry.

"The top legislature is very likely to introduce a law this year to make community correction more accessible to inmates," said Chen Sixi, a lawmaker and member of the drafting panel of the law.

"What our website can do is little, so we hope authorities and more enterprises will join us to help more released convicts," Wang said, adding that convicts, especially the young ones, urgently need assistance after being freed.

Meng Hairong, the employer who provided jobs for the 10 released people on Monday, said society should give more attention and job opportunities to the special group.

"They committed crimes when they were young, but we cannot discriminate against them," Meng said, adding he had come across the website from time to time and decided to give ex-convicts a chance to do some simple work, such as construction and salvage.

Shu Li, an official from a traditional Chinese medicine company in Southwest China's Sichuan province, who is thinking of recruiting the freed prisoners, said employers should not think the ex-convicts might commit crimes again or tarnish the image of enterprises, because that is unfair to them.

"The group really needs our encouragement and their confidence will be easily built up with our help," she said. "Our job opportunities will help not only them, but also their families."