Judicial case database goes online

A judicial database, which aims to improve legal services for residents, was put online on Thursday, China's top court said.

The database, designed and operated by a legal research institute under the Supreme People's Court, collects judicial data from 3,523 courts nationwide, including how many cases judges handle and what kind of cases a court hears most, and updates the information every five minutes, according to a statement from the top court.

"The database connects courts across the country, preventing their data or information from being isolated," said Xu Jianfeng, director of the top court's information center.

So far, the database holds 130 million cases as well as their related judicial information, the statement said.

"In the past, we had to go to the grassroots to collect figures and carry out research, which took almost half a year each time, but now such work can be completed using the database in a few minutes," Xu said.

On Thursday, the top court released judicial data related to juvenile crimes and gang-related offenses.

In a report about young offenders, the data revealed that the number of such cases declined last year, but showed that violent crimes among juveniles were still serious.

It also stated that 62.63 percent of juvenile offenders or defendants were middle school students, and their major offenses were theft, intentional injury and robbery.

"What we want is to use the database to make our work transparent to the public, and provide judges with a convenient means of searching for information," Xu said, adding that it is also a key step to modernizing the judicial system.