Prosecutors urged to severely punish gangs

Prosecutors across the country were urged to severely punish those involved in organized crime and gangs to address both the symptoms and the root causes of such crimes at a meeting on Saturday.

The three-year special campaign against organized crime and gangs, which was launched in January 2018, has entered a decisive year and a large number of such cases have entered the prosecution stage, Zhang Jun, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, told a national conference of prosecutors in Beijing.

Last year, the number of arrests for such crimes fell 19.9 percent year-on-year, while the number of prosecutions for such crimes rose 60.3 percent, indicating a large number of cases were entering the prosecution phase.