Published by: World Tibet Network News 97/05/16 23:00 GMT

By Mure Dickie

BEIJING, May 15 (Reuter) - China is making progress in developing spacious and modern model prisons aimed at improving standards across the country's huge penal system, Finland's prison chief said on Thursday.

China's efforts to build better jails and boost training of its army of 300,000 prison staff showed a genuine desire to reform the much-criticised prison network, said Finnish Prison Administration Director General K.J. Lang.

``What surprised me most (was) the large message of improvement,'' Lang said in an interview at the end of a 10-day visit to Beijing and the remote Himalayan region of Tibet.

International human rights groups have frequently criticised Chinese prisons for the widespread torture and abuse of inmates and for denying basic medical care to high-profile dissidents.

While the prisons visited had been surprisingly advanced, it was impossible to judge from them the conditions accorded to all of China's 1.35 million convict population, Lang said.

``You cannot after a visit like this... say what is the situation in all China,'' he said. ``There must be a lot of differences.''

Punishment had been cruel throughout China's long history, but real efforts were being made to improve conditions at the Beijing municipal prison and Lhasa's central jail, Lang said.

The Beijing prison had been nominated as one of China's five ``model prisons,'' he said.

``What was most impressive in both places... was the amount of space reserved for living, for work and production, for education,'' he said.

The Lhasa prison, home to about half of Tibet's prison population and many of the restive region's jailed pro-independence activists, had been totally rebuilt and was now more impressive than many European jails, he said.

The Finnish officials, whose visit was part of 10 years of exchanges with Chinese counterparts, were allowed to speak with one inmate jailed on counter-revolutionary charges, who appeared to live under the same conditions as other prisoners, he said.

Apart from the standard penal system investigated by Lang and his colleagues, China maintains a huge labour camp network where common and political offenders routinely suffer administrative detention for up to three years without trial.

Police detention centres are also extensive and have been criticised by human rights groups and Chinese officials alike for cases of reported torture of suspects.

Beijing's efforts to improve the prison system included the expansion of its main prison staff training centre to cater for 4,000 students from the current 2,500, Lang said.

Beijing Justice Minister Xiao Yang in February dismissed foreign criticism of China's jails, saying they aimed to combine punishment with reform and to mix labour with education.

Only six to eight percent of convicts returned to crime after their release, Xiao was quoted by state media as saying. REUTER