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On March 10, three junior high school students in Handan, Hebei Province, killed their classmate and hid the body in an abandoned vegetable greenhouse. The cruelty of the method aroused public outrage. Faced with incomprehensible malice, for a time, both in the judicial field and on social media, "Children over 12 years old can be prosecuted" and "Severely punish evil children" became the overwhelming voices.

Subsequently, news about school bullying and juvenile crime frequently entered the public eye: On March 19, a junior high school student in Suining County, Shaoyang, Hunan, took the lead in stripping the clothes of a girl in the next dormitory; on March 21, eight minors in Shenmu City, Shaanxi Province, beat two minors in a maternity room...

However, after labeling these children and sending them to prison, there are still questions that need to be answered: What will happen to these children in the future? How do the six major protection factors for minors, namely family, school, society, justice, the Internet and government, work together?

In 2018, commissioned by the public security, procuratorial and judicial authorities, psychological counselor Sun Hui and her Xining Mental Health Research Association went to the Qinghai Juvenile Offenders Correctional Institution to conduct recidivism risk assessments and follow-up visits for juvenile offenders. So far, they have served more than 520 people in total.

"In the past, when facing these juvenile offenders, people tended to see more of the problems 'on the iceberg', but counseling emphasizes going under the iceberg and understanding the reasons behind the behavior. She used the example of a child lying. In the past, we would ask more questions like 'how could you lie', but counseling asks 'why did you lie'."

Sun Hui said that when she delved into the inner world of "problem children", she felt more kindness. "We often see evil because we did not intervene properly in their early stage, which resulted in the inner pain being expressed again and again through their behavior."

Image source: Movie "Better Days"

The following article was compiled by Phoenix Public Welfare's "Actor" based on Sun Hui's narration.

When psychological counseling meets juvenile offenders:From Silence to Trust

The first person I served was a victim. In the psychological counseling room of the procuratorate, the prosecutor told the client, "Talk to the teacher if you have any problems." The child didn't know what a counselor does, and looked like a kite trapped in the darkness, waiting for me to pull him out bit by bit.

In 2018, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League jointly signed a cooperation framework agreement on building a social support system for juvenile prosecution. Against this background, the Xining Procuratorate found us.

At that time, everyone was exploring new paths. At first, we gave psychological lectures. After hearing the children's feedback and insights, Director Wu of the Juvenile Detention Center realized the value of psychological intervention and invited us to conduct two or three focus group services, with topics including stress relief and trauma healing.

By chance, I met a case I had served on while doing social investigations at the procuratorate. His name was Xiao Ming (pseudonym), he was 14 years old at the time, and was sentenced to one year and eight months for robbery.

Xiao Ming is tall and thin, and has a very introverted personality. Because of previous social research, I learned about his past - he was abandoned by his mother when he was young, his father was imprisoned for arson, and he was bullied at school. It was his grandmother who depended on him and raised him up.

When I first met Xiao Ming in the juvenile detention center, he kept his head down and picked at his hands. I asked him questions, but he didn't say anything. Because I had met his grandmother before, I knew that was the softest part of his heart, so I shared with him the situation when we met and told him, "Grandma is waiting for you at home." Slowly, as the consultation progressed, by the second and third time, Xiao Ming began to tell me his story. He raised his head, and I saw light in his big eyes.

At the same time, Xiao Ming's condition in the juvenile detention center has also improved significantly - from being a loner to helping his peers, from not participating in group activities to actively dancing in class. The prison guards and director of the juvenile detention center saw this and asked me if I could bring you in to help these juvenile prisoners.

Image source: Xining Mental Health Research Association

From the beginning of 2014 to the present, we have gradually established a model of assistance and education of “accepting cases - prison assessment - re-socialization assistance and education - prison assessment - follow-up visits - case closure”.

First, a dynamic "one case, one file" system is established. Based on the family and individual psychological assessment forms of juvenile offenders, risk assessment is conducted from the perspective of family and personal difficulties.

Then, we develop personalized intervention strategies, conduct one-on-one psychological counseling and help and educate children to clarify their inner personality dynamics and gradually build a perfect personality. In this process, we will also introduce focus solution groups, supportive counseling groups and other forms to help them constantly understand and accept themselves in the process of interpersonal interaction.

Finally, after they are released from prison, we will also make an assessment and conduct follow-up visits. This is a very important step. We usually adhere to the working principle of "meeting people, talking to them, and making friends with them". We will grasp their situation and trends from many aspects such as thoughts, work, study, and life, and help them say goodbye to their past illegal behavior.

In addition, because the families of juvenile offenders generally have the situation of "parents raising but not educating, grandparents raising, or fostering and educating", we will provide counseling and training to the parents or other guardians of juvenile offenders with the theme of children's education and family relationships.

Psychological intervention strategies for juvenile offenders (Source: Xining Mental Health Research Association)

In the juvenile justice system, if the offender has not reached the "age of criminal responsibility", he or she cannot be punished according to the criminal law in many cases, and can only be let go. Although this reflects the trust in the "self-healing" of minors, it can also easily lead to their "repeated offenses". This is called the "pig raising dilemma", which means that the judicial system can only choose to "raise them up and then beat them, and fatten them up and then kill them" for these minors involved in crimes.

But combined with our work experience, we will find that the "pig farming dilemma" is not unsolvable. After the "critical prevention" intervention, the crime rate of minors will be significantly reduced - this requires us to cooperate with schools, judicial departments, communities, and mass organizations to form a more complete assistance and education network: on the one hand, actively carry out popular science education such as rule of law, morality, and psychology; on the other hand, based on the principle of tolerance but not indulgence, use more personalized assistance and education strategies and conduct risk assessment and social danger assessment for minors in a longer term.

Basic characteristics of juvenile offenders (Photo source: Xining Mental Health Research Association)

After handling so many cases, we have found a rule: if a child has a relatively complete social support system, it is usually easier to establish relationships, and the speed of behavioral recovery and personal growth is also faster. In response to some juvenile crime cases this year, many people said that there is absolute evil in these children. But I want to say that I see more of the goodness of human nature.

Why do I say this? We see evil because there is no successful intervention and we do not understand the reasons behind the problem. If we fail to accumulate successful cases and experience, in the long run, the public will only see the tip of the "iceberg", as if they are caught in a vicious cycle.

"Am I hopeless?": She and he behind the label

From 2018 to now, I have handled at least 200 cases, many of which were impressive.

The first time I met Xiaohua (pseudonym) was in the psychological counseling room of the procuratorate. She was only 15 years old at the time, tall and beautiful. She was accused of manslaughter - the person who died was her infant child.

While attending vocational school, Xiaohua met her then 21-year-old "boyfriend" on a short video app and got pregnant after having sex. She cut the umbilical cord with her hands in the school bathroom out of anger and gave birth to the child. She could not bear the responsibility of suddenly becoming a mother at the age of 15, and the pressure was very great.

During her pregnancy, Xiaohua couldn't sleep all night in the school dormitory. After the baby was born, the constant crying scared her. She took the baby to her grandmother's house, but the baby still cried. What should she do? In her mental confusion, she accidentally covered the baby's mouth with the quilt.

The child died of suffocation. For a mother, this kind of pain is lifelong, but Xiaohua is only 15 years old and she still has the rest of her life to live.

While sitting in front of me, Xiaohua's body and voice kept shaking.

Image source: Movie "Princess Han"

The philosophy that our organization has always adhered to is to first see the juvenile offender as a person, and then see the "problems" behind him. When we can respect him, he can relax and a relationship can begin to be established.

I didn't ask Xiaohua to tell me about the crime first. Instead, I asked her, "Is there anything that made you proud when you were in school?" She was stunned, and while she was thinking about her answer, her body slowly stopped shaking.

I worked with Xiaohua for three years. As our communication deepened, we developed trust. I found that she was very capable, a good cook, especially big plate chicken, and liked to draw. She said she dreamed of becoming a doctor, but was trapped by a weak knowledge system. She also had a younger brother who grew up in a family that favored boys over girls.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Xiaohua told me that she wanted to do something. I recommended her to do charity work, and she served eight times that summer. The procuratorate noticed this process, and they helped Xiaohua change schools so that she could continue to study medicine. In the new school, she became a class monitor and won many awards. I saw hope in Xiaohua, which made me love my work even more.

Image source: Visual China

Like Xiaohua, before I met Xiaoguang (pseudonym), the police officer said to me, "You just need to do it once!" It seemed that the subtext was that this child was hopeless. When I saw the case, I was really shocked. He had stolen more than 300 times, and he could be called the "king of thieves". What kind of child was this?

But when I met Xiaoguang, I found that his temperament was completely different from what I thought. Wearing a sports suit, he looked like an ordinary child.

During the conversation, his childish side would come out. He would brag to me: "Teacher, I smoke cigarettes that cost 400 yuan a pack!" But when I got deeper, I found that Xiaoguang's parents divorced early and remarried. In a sense, he was abandoned by his family.

In Xiaoguang's description, he lived a life like this: when he had nowhere to go, he would stay alone in the mountains and listen to songs for an afternoon; he would only eat one meal every two or three days, and when he was too hungry to sleep, he would go out and walk ten kilometers alone. He told me that once he went to look for his father, he saw his family eating through the crack in the iron gate, and he knocked hard on the door, but no one opened it after a long time.

Most people may not understand the injuries this child has suffered, and even I cannot describe them. Once I mentioned my experience to him, and I said, "It's as disgusting as eating a fly." Then he told me, "What's so great about flies? I've eaten them many times."

I am also a mother, and my child is the same age as him, both 14 years old. At that moment, I felt really heartbroken.

Image source: Visual China

As counselors, we sometimes want to refer repeat offenders, including those involved in serious cases, because we are worried about the risks or have personal issues. When facing Xiaoguang's situation, I was also given a shot of caution, so that I would not trust him too much sometimes.

But so far, in the four months that Xiaoguang and I have been in contact, he has not stolen anything. When we talked about "reoffending", he even said, "Teacher, don't believe me, people who steal will steal again, and sometimes we are really hopeless." I saw his honesty with me.

Some may ask, why do these children commit crimes again?

Through research, we learned that most children usually increase their stealing behavior after administrative punishment and admonition. On the one hand, they already know where it is easy to steal and where it is not. On the other hand, most of these children are adolescents, and their frontal lobes are still in the development stage. They have the physiological characteristics of being impulsive and irritable. They cannot deeply understand the social impact of their own behavior, and they are more concerned about the relationships and opinions among their peers. For example, Xiaoguang received high evaluations within their group. Everyone said that he was "very righteous, had leadership, and good skills", which would stimulate him to continue his past criminal behavior.

"Now I probably steal 40% of the time and beat people 60% of the time." Xiaoguang told me that he actually doesn't want to steal anymore, but he will be affected by the group. What bothers him most right now is the bullying, deception and betrayal among his peers.

Image source: Visual China

I used to feel powerless in such situations, but with the help of the supervisor, I now face every child with a normal heart. I want to tell them: You are dignified people, and someone cares about you. As long as you have skills, you will see the light in life.

Xiaoguang and I made a bet. I said, if you are determined to stop stealing, our team will work with the judicial department and mass organizations to help you find a school, learn the skills you want to learn, and earn a salary through your labor.

“Out, then what?”: Why we need judicial social workers

What can really bring about change for juvenile offenders is to make them realize that they are valuable people and have external resources to turn to for help.

Sometimes, even if a child does a lot of service work in a juvenile detention center, he or she still has a high recidivism rate when he or she is released. Why?

Imagine a child who has no parents to raise him, whose grandparents have passed away, who is hungry and bullied every day. If someone gives him a meal or helps him fight, will he be grateful to those people? What if those people give him “quoted energy”?

Why do we need to integrate juvenile justice? Because protecting minors is not just a task for a certain organization or individual. It requires the construction of a comprehensive system that not only looks at the case itself, but also the family, school and social environment behind the minor. This involves many conceptual issues.

Why did the public security comrades think that some children always lie? Because in that environment, many children are very nervous and dare not tell the truth, so they choose to protect themselves by lying. The traditional admonition is very similar to the behavior mechanism of many parents. It emphasizes, "How can you lie?!" but does not look at the reasons behind the behavior. If we use an analogy to explain the difference between admonition and psychological counseling, it is actually that the former is on the iceberg and the latter is under the iceberg.

Image source: Visual China

Going under the iceberg, we can see that the more pain the juvenile offenders have, the more extreme their behavior tends to be, because this pain needs to be expressed. When we face criminal behavior, we also need to see the difficult-to-resolve contradictions and appease their emotions, which requires a lot of effort, not only sincerity, but also some skills.

This requires us to establish a professional judicial social worker team. Currently, there are seven people in our organization who are engaged in this work full-time. The supervisors are all part-time. They usually take classes in colleges and universities, and take time out every week to provide guidance. For more difficult cases, the meeting lasts for three hours. In addition, we have about 50 part-time volunteers. The organization will conduct graded assessments based on their academic qualifications and experience. Not everyone can enter the juvenile detention center to take cases right away. He must record and study with the supervisor for at least two years, and accumulate at least hundreds of hours of psychological counseling.

Image source: Xining Mental Health Research Association

Becoming a judicial social worker requires a long period of experience, but for young college volunteers, because they also need to survive, and sometimes their values ​​are at odds, there will be staff turnover at a certain point. However, in the process of promoting the integration of juvenile justice, whether it is the investigation or auxiliary investigation stage, whether it is the court or the juvenile detention center, more professional helpers are needed. With the current size of the team, the help we can provide can be said to be minimal.

Fortunately, we have accumulated some advantages. On the one hand, we have a good reputation in the industry, and on the other hand, we have also been recognized by government leaders and women's federations, and have accumulated certain experience and resources.

For example, this year we are innovatively using drama therapy to intervene in juvenile delinquents. The origin of this is that we visited 15 remote villages last summer with our own anti-sexual assault picture book drama. What impressed us deeply was that when I asked the sixth grade and first grade girls in junior high school whether they knew what indecency or sexual assault was, they either said they didn't know or were very shy and felt it was disgusting and didn't dare to say it. So we acted out the prevention, protection and rights protection situations through picture book dramas to let them know that if such a thing happens, it is not my fault, and I can protect myself.

While working together in the juvenile detention center, we wondered if we could do something through drama.

Image source: Visual China

It just so happened that I had listened to the class of Professor Zhou Xiaoli of Shanghai Theatre Academy because of the annual meeting of picture book drama. After contacting them, Professor Zhou also felt that he could help me, so he brought his graduate student team to start our cooperation in psychological drama. Professor Zhou's team supervised us in drama, and we worked together on script writing and rehearsal. Every time we went to the juvenile detention center, we would organize an online meeting. It took more than a year to have the script we are rehearsing now, called "Looking for the Monkey King". The play is about an hour long and revolves around stories that happened in the juvenile detention center. The themes include theft and sexual assault, as well as some real events that have been integrated.

For this script, we did not rehearse in the usual sense, but rather did a running-in. There are also some rules for assigning roles. Generally, the victim is played by a teacher from the institution because he can better transform emotions due to his psychology background. Prison guards are usually played by prison guards. The criminal suspects in the play are played by specific juvenile offenders in real life, that is, "playing themselves". In the process of situational role-playing, once he is touched by a certain point, he can re-understand his pain through ruminative thinking. In this process, some defects and cognitive biases have the opportunity to be corrected.

Although we haven't officially performed to the public yet, I'm very happy that this approach has indeed had an impact on the participants. There was a child who was sentenced to prison for sexual assault. He was previously named by the prison guards as "silent and uncooperative" in the juvenile detention center, but that day they told me that he had become a different person recently and that he only needed one more praise to have his sentence reduced.

Image source: Movie "Spring"

Although there have been these gratifying changes, we also know that everything has just begun. From the perspective of minors, taking Xining City where I live as an example, due to the influence of the natural environment and economic level, the problems of lack of educational resources and intergenerational poverty cannot be completely solved. This potentially leads to psychological difficulties for minors, such as lack of self-awareness, low sense of value, lack of creativity, and lack of family supervision. On the judicial side, since judicial police officers are also relatively weak in the knowledge of minors' mental health, there is also a long way to go to carry out education within the system.

Right now, for institutions, in order to promote the integration of juvenile justice, in addition to the biggest difficulty of funding, what we need is to make the government, enterprises, and foundations see that juvenile offenders are a group that needs more attention and more resources to help them integrate into society; more importantly, to guide the public not to label juvenile offenders or criminal behavior, to truly see what happens behind the behavior, to combine legal awareness with the protection of minors, and to create an environment that is friendly to children and young people.

-END-

Author/Li Xunqi

Interview/Li Xunqi, Zhou Mengge

Editor/She Yunqing