BEIJING -- Chinese authorities on Wednesday released guidelines for court hearings in sentence reduction and parole cases as part of efforts to ensure leniency is only granted to those who are truly repentant.

The key issue in hearing parole and sentence reduction cases is how to decide whether a convict is repentant, according to the Supreme People's Court (SPC), which released the document together with the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Justice.

Apart from convicts' acts of repentance during their prison sentence, the court should take into consideration whether the convicts truly feel sorry for their criminal activities and realize the damage they caused to society, according to the SPC.