Shanghai courts have taken action against 6,049 former defendants who have balked at paying court-ordered compensation by garnishing wages, freezing bank accounts and old fashioned public shaming, local media reported Thursday.
Shanghai Higher People's Court launched a campaign in November 2011 that aimed to force thousands of former defendants who owed compensation to pay up.
Shanghai Higher People's Court reported that the local court system has taken action against 171 percent more of these deadbeat defendants than it had in the 12 months before the campaign started, the Oriental Morning Post reported Thursday.
To accomplish this task, the court not only garnished wages and tapped bank accounts, but also publicized the defendants' transgressions in their own neighborhoods, said Zhang Guanqun, press officer with Shanghai Higher People's Court. Local courts have posted their names on court websites and put up notices in their neighborhoods to pressure them into paying.
The court employed these methods for people who lacked stable incomes. "For people with a job, we can get their employers to help us take the money out of their salaries. We can also freeze their bank accounts and take the money to pay the court-ordered compensation," Zhang told the Global Times.
Landmark building should respect the public's feeling