Inside the Shanghai Training Center for Minors' Prosecution Work, several yellowing letters from the 1990s sit on display. Written by juveniles once involved in criminal cases to the prosecutors who helped them, their opening lines read like personal confessions rather than legal records: "Dear sister, please allow me to call you this. In the hardest days, it was you who made me believe that I was still cared for..."

These tender letters reflect the human element at the heart of a four-decade evolution in China's juvenile justice system.

What began in June 1986 as a modest local experiment — a "juvenile prosecution group" with just two desks and two staff members at the People's Procuratorate of Changning District in Shanghai — has grown into a nationwide, specialized minors' prosecution framework.

Chen Da, a Shanghai deputy to the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, and vice-president of the Shanghai Huaxia cultural and economic promotion association, said the Changning initiative represented far more than an institutional adjustment.

"It may have seemed like a small step at the time, but it was a big step toward truly seeing children," Chen said.

She said Shanghai prosecutors later pioneered mechanisms including social investigation and the presence of appropriate adults during proceedings, practices that have since been absorbed into national legislation and normative documents.

"I hope prosecutors will always preserve the courage to be first and the original aspiration of doing everything for children, so that this beam of light can illuminate the road home and the road ahead for more children," Chen said.

Song Yinghui, vice-president of the China Criminal Procedure Law Research Association and a professor at Beijing Normal University Law School, said China's minors' prosecution work, although it started later than some overseas systems, has made three major leaps within a relatively short period.

It has moved from local pilot programs to nationwide implementation, establishing an independent branch of procuratorial business, and shifted from simple case-handling to integrated legal protection.

Over the past 40 years, China's approach to juvenile justice has expanded beyond criminal prosecution to encompass civil, administrative and public interest law.

Song said this development has given China a distinctive juvenile justice model. Rooted in the country's constitutional order and procuratorial system, minors' prosecution links criminal, civil, administrative, public interest and social protection. Its guiding principles include the best interests of minors, education as the main approach and punishment as supplementary, and the dual protection of juvenile suspects and defendants as well as minor victims.

The need for such a preventive approach has grown more urgent as China faces new challenges, including serious crimes committed at younger ages, online crimes involving minors, school bullying and weakened family guardianship. Many juvenile offenses, Song noted, develop gradually from minor misconduct. Early, professional intervention is therefore essential.

This year's work report of the Supreme People's Procuratorate showed that in 2025, prosecutions of crimes against minors and cases involving juvenile suspects accepted for review and prosecution fell by 2.2 percent and 9.8 percent year-on-year, respectively. It was the first "double decline" in minors-related crime in nearly five years.

Song said the change should be viewed positively but rationally. The decline suggests that front-end prevention, graded intervention and comprehensive protection are beginning to show results. But structural problems remain, and one year's data does not mean the issue has been fundamentally resolved.