As mobile text and voice messaging communication services become more popular, a prison in Guangdong Province provided a public WeChat account for the families of convicts.
With a public name "Guangdong Prison," the WeChat account allows relatives of convicts to connect with their convicted family member and get to know their condition by communicating with the prison's staff and administrative personnel who answer all their concerns.
"Family members of inmates in Guangdong can immediately know what the inmates are doing in the prisons via the country's most popular instant messaging tool," a statement issued by the Guangdong Prison Administrative Bureau to China Daily said.
In the whole country, Guangdong Province is the first prison to launch a WeChat account.
According to China Daily, the account has gained over 1,000 users with 170 messages and comments on its first week of trial.
The relatives of the convicts found the prison's initiative as "easy and convenient communication channel."
According to Wang Peiwen, director of Gaoming Prison in Foshan, the WeChat account is part of the bureau's effort for transparent opperations, China Daily reported.
Over 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) was spent by Guangdong's provincial government in 2014 for making the prison's system more transparent.
Peng Peng, a senior researcher at the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, said that the launch of the WeChat account is an example of how technology is being used to improve the way prisons are run. He further said that it will help protect the human rights and other legal rights and interests of the inmates.
WeChat was released by Chinese investment holding company Tencent in 2011. It provides text and voice messaging communication services, including text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, sharing of photographs and videos, and location sharing.
It is the fifth most used smartphone application worldwide and has 300 million registered Chinese users.