China triples the number of specialized schools for juvenile delinquents

As of November 2025, China had built a total of 430 specialized schools for juvenile delinquents nationwide, including 316 specialized correctional education institutions — nearly triple the figure at the end of 2023, according to a post on the official WeChat account of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

These schools are statutory venues for specialized correctional education, tasked with preventing and addressing juvenile delinquency and fostering the healthy growth of young people, it said.

To date, every province has at least one such school, with a combined capacity of over 28,000 seats. This has basically resolved the long-standing issue of a lack of venues for specialized correctional education, the post noted.

Thanks to cross-sector collaboration, the number of juvenile criminal suspects nationwide subject to procuratorial review for arrest and prosecution dropped by 3.5 percent and 10 percent year on year, respectively.

Meanwhile, specialized education steering committees at all levels have played an irreplaceable role in advancing admission evaluations and on-site teaching management for specialized correctional education. Full coverage of such committees has been achieved at the provincial, municipal and county levels across the country.

In 2025, about 21,000 individuals nationwide were legally placed under specialized correctional education, representing a year-on-year increase of 37.7 percent.