Eight?years on, the aishengwang, a local area network (LAN) established by the Shanghai Qingpu Prison for better management, still plays a pivotal role.

The Shanghai government Wednesday gave it high credit on its official website.

The prison launched the LAN in 2004 in a bid to provide more information on life for inmates who can also use it as an education and interaction platform.

The LAN, which is divided into 26 channels such as news, forums, libraries, law consultation, etc, typically receives 3,480 hits every day. It doesn't have to pay for an editor, as the inmates themselves publish content under police instruction.

To meet the diversified needs of inmates, whose educational level ranges from illiterate to Ph D, the police have collected more than 2,800 digital books as well as over 3,700 video study courses.

Through a series of systematic Internet skills training, every inmate spends the day in comfort: he can submit his writing to a column, send text messages to families, borrow a book, learn to use software and even do some shopping.