At the invitation of the Criminal Law Office of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People's Congress (NPC), Professor Wu Zongxian delivered a special lecture titled "Discussion on Several Issues Regarding the Revision of the Prison Law" on the morning of May 20, 2025. Professor Wu, a distinguished second-level professor and doctoral supervisor at the Law School and the College for Criminal Law Science of Beijing Normal University, presented his lecture in the fourth conference room of the NPC office building. The session was attended by leaders from the Legislative Affairs Commission, along with relevant staff from the Criminal Law Office and other departments.

Professor Wu Zongxian mainly engages in teaching and research in criminology, prison studies, community corrections, and criminal psychology, and is a senior expert in prison research in China. He has served as a researcher at the Ministry of Justice's Institute of Crime Prevention and as the director of the Prison Studies Office, conducting comprehensive and in-depth research on prison issues for over 40 years. He studies not only Chinese prisons but also foreign prisons; he is involved in both theoretical research and significant decision-making research in the field of prisons, having conducted field investigations of over 100 domestic prisons and dozens of prisons (correctional institutions) in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Japan, and South Korea; in addition to publishing a large number of articles on prisons, he has also published several books on the subject. In the area of criminal psychological rehabilitation, he authored "Foreign Criminal Psychological Rehabilitation" (2004), and served as the chief editor of "Psychological Rehabilitation of Chinese Inmates" (2004) and "Techniques for the Psychological Rehabilitation of Chinese Inmates" (2010); in the area of criminal reform, he authored "A Theory of Offender Rehabilitation: An Initial Exploration of the Criminogenic Difference Theory of Offender Rehabilitation" (2007) and "A Theory of Offender Rehabilitation: A Criminogenic Difference Theory of Offender Rehabilitation" (Second Edition, 2019); in terms of comprehensive books, he published "Introduction to Penology" (2012) as a sole author. Regarding foreign prisons, he published "Contemporary Western Penology" (2005) as a sole author. On juvenile offenders, he served as the editor for "Research on the Rehabilitation of Juvenile Offenders" (2012) and other books. He also edited a book specifically studying the revision of prison law—"Research on the Revision of Our Country's Prison Law" (2021).

Professor Wu Zongxian's lecture content is based on the aforementioned research, investigations, and reflections. The lecture content consists of three parts. The first part addresses the conceptual issues of prison law revision, where he elaborated on the need to maintain the concept of average living standards, the idea of not gaining extra benefits due to crime, balancing supervision and rehabilitation, combining prison classification with offender grading, the socialization of prison work, a domestic focus with international considerations, and balancing current needs with future development. He hopes that the content of these concepts can provide certain reference value for improving prison work and revising prison law. The second part discusses the content issues of prison law revision, where he shared his thoughts and views on accurately understanding the punitive nature of imprisonment, establishing a regular information exchange system among criminal justice agencies, adding content related to the management of foreign offenders, incorporating crime prevention work in prisons, stipulating a classification system for prison workers, encouraging expert-type officers to work at the grassroots level, promoting the physical and mental health of prison workers, establishing mother-infant units, further enhancing mutual checks and balances among criminal justice agencies, ensuring outdoor activity time for offenders, adding relevant provisions for pardoned individuals, and including regulations related to communication and visitation. The third part addresses the expression issues of prison law revision, where he proposed improvement suggestions for the wording of several newly added articles in the "Draft Revision of the Prison Law of the People's Republic of China."

Prior to the commencement of the lecture, Professor Wu Zongxian presented the Criminal Law Office with a copy of his edited volume, Research on the Revision of Prison Law in China. This comprehensive work not only encompasses detailed research reports but also proposes a complete draft for the revised law, consisting of 176 articles organized across 11 chapters, with legislative rationales provided for each article. Additionally, Professor Wu previously gifted the Criminal Law Office a digital copy of his monograph, Contemporary Western Penology.