So here's some news from China: apparently, their government wants to abolish the goals for conviction and arrest that police are currently held to.

This was news to me - I didn't know that China had something like this in place. But apparently, the police there are evaluated largely on how many arrests lead to convictions, and how many trials result in guilty verdicts. That seems like a really bad idea, because then what's the point of having a trial? The article I found also notes that because of this, police are reluctant to arrest anyone for minor crimes unless they're sure they can get a confession out of them. Similarly, they've been known to use torture to get confessions, regardless of whether the person in question actually committed the crime. 

This kind of practice has been in place since the 90s, but apparently the Chinese government realized that it's a bad idea, so they're aiming to rethink the way they evaluate their police. The article says that this has to do with a lot of recent convictions being overturned upon further investigation. China isn't exactly known for having a fair legal system, but hopefully this will make things a bit more reasonable when dealing with day-to-day crime.

The article in question can be found here.