Penal system in China

Hard labor still was the most common form of punishment in China in the 1980s. The penal system stressed reform rather than retribution, and it was expected that productive labor would reduce the penal institutions' cost to society. Even death sentences could be stayed by two-year reprieve. If a prisoner was judged to have reformed during that period, his or her sentence could be commuted to life or a fixed term at labor. The Prison Law of the People's Republic of China was enacted December 20, 1994. Since then the Chinese prison system has operated under supervision of the Bureau of Prison Administration which falls under the Ministry of Justice ^[1]. All these divisions of government are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. The head of the prison administration is Liu Zhenyu, his official title is Director-General^[2]. The prisons in the provinces are then further managed by local offices of justice. The Ministry of Justice states that it holds prisoners in over 700 establishments across the country. There are also thirty extra penitentiaries for juveniles. The corrections system in China has an official population of 1,649,804 inmates (mid-2015), including pre-trial detainees ^[3]. The prison population rate is 118 per 100,000 people. Female offenders make up 6.5% of the total prison population and 0.4% of prisoners in China are of foreign nationality. In general, the prison population rate is going down in China. In 2008, the prison population rate in China peaked with a rate of 121. There was a plateau created in 2010 as the prison population rate remained the same ^[4]. Some issues against human rights that prisoners experience are, “…executions without due process, illegal detentions at unofficial holding facilities known as “black jails,” torture and coerced confessions of prisoners…” ^[5]. There is a laundry list of issues presented on the U.S State Department’s Humanities report for 2016. These include but are not limited to failure to protect refugees, extrajudicial disappearances of citizens, and discrimination against women and minorities ^[6].

Punishable offenses

The Criminal Law that took effect on January 1, 1980, removed criminal punishment from the discretion of officials, whose arbitrary decisions were based on perceptions of the current party line, and established it on a legal basis. The specific provisions of that law listed eight categories of offenses.

The Statute on Punishment for Counterrevolutionary Activity approved under the Common Program in 1951 listed a wide range of counter-revolutionary offenses, punishable in most cases by the death penalty or life imprisonment. In subsequent years, especially during the Cultural Revolution, any activity that the party or government at any level considered a challenge to its authority could be termed counterrevolutionary. The 1980 law narrowed the scope of counter-revolutionary activity considerably and defined it as "any act jeopardizing the People's Republic of China, aimed at overthrowing the political power of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist state." Under this category it included such specific offenses as espionage, insurrection, conspiracy to overthrow the government, instigating a member of the armed forces to turn traitor, or carrying out sabotage directed against the government.

Other offenses, in the order listed in the 1980 law, were transgressions of public security, defined as any acts which endanger people or public property; illegal possession of arms and ammunition; offenses against the socialist economic order, including smuggling and speculation; offenses against both the personal rights and the democratic rights of citizens, which range from homicide, rape, and kidnapping to libel; and offenses of encroachment on property, including robbery, theft, embezzlement, and fraud. There were also offenses against the public order, including obstruction of official business; mob disturbances; manufacture, sale, or transport of illegal drugs or pornography; vandalizing or illegally exporting cultural relics; offenses against marriage and the family, which include interference with the freedom of marriage and abandoning or maltreating children or aged or infirm relatives; and malfeasance, which specifically relates to state functionaries and includes such offenses as accepting bribes, divulging state secrets, dereliction of duty, and maltreatment of persons under detention or surveillance.

Under the 1980 law, these offenses were punishable when criminal liability could be ascribed. Criminal liability was attributed to intentional offenses and those acts of negligence specifically provided for by the law. There were principal and supplementary penalties. Principal penalties were public surveillance, detention, fixed-term imprisonment, life imprisonment, and death. Supplementary penalties were fines, deprivation of political rights, and confiscation of property. Supplementary penalties could be imposed exclusive of principal penalties. Foreigners could be deported with or without other penalties.

Death penalty

China retained the death penalty in the 1980s for certain serious crimes. The 1980 law required that death sentences be approved by the Supreme People's Court. This requirement was temporarily modified in 1981 to allow the higher people's courts of provinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities to approve death sentences for murder, robbery, rape, bomb-throwing, arson, and sabotage. In 1983 this modification was made permanent. The death sentence was not imposed on anyone under eighteen years of age at the time of the crime nor "on a woman found to be pregnant during the trial." Criminals sentenced to death could be granted a stay of execution for two years, during which they might demonstrate their repentance and reform. In this case the sentence could be reduced. Mao Zedong was credited with having originated this idea, which some observers found cruel although it obviated many executions.

In 2004, Zhang Shiqiang, who was convicted of double murder and rape, became one of the first convicts to be killed in China's new collection of mobile execution chambers, commonly referred to as "death vans."^[7] This was part of the Chinese government's new plan to phase out firing squads for lethal injections.

China executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined in 2005,^[7] Amnesty International estimated there were at least 1,770 executions in China that year, and most of them were still by firing squad.

In 2006, the Chinese government reversed the previous modified death penalty requirement that was made permanent in 1983.^[8] The law was enacted on January 1, 2007, and required all death sentences be approved by the Supreme People's Court (SPC), effectively depriving the provincial people's courts of exercising the final say on the death sentence, allowing death penalties handed out by provincial courts to be reviewed and ratified by the SPC.^[8]

Penal labor

The overwhelming majority of prisoners were sentenced to penal labor. There were two categories of penal labor: the criminal penalty—"reform through labor"—imposed by the court and the administrative penalty—"re-education through labor"—imposed outside the court system. The former could be any fixed number of years, while the latter lasted three or four years. In fact, those with either kind of sentence ended up at the same camps, which were usually state farms or mines but occasionally were factory prisons in the city.

The November 1979 supplementary regulations on "re-education through labor" created labor training administration committees consisting of members of the local government, public security bureau, and labor department. The police, government, or a work unit could recommend that an individual be assigned to such reeducation, and, if the labor training administration committee agreed, hard labor was imposed without further due process. The police reportedly made heavy use of the procedure, especially with urban youths, and probably used it to move unemployed, youthful, potential troublemakers out of the cities.

Monitoring

In the early 1980s, the people's procuratorates supervised the prisons, ensuring compliance with the law. Prisoners worked eight hours a day, six days a week, and had their food and clothing provided by the prison. They studied politics, law, state policies, and current events two hours daily, half of that in group discussion. They were forbidden to read anything not provided by the prison, to speak dialects not understood by the guards, or to keep cash, gold, jewelry, or other goods useful in an escape. Mail was censored, and generally only one visitor was allowed each month.

Prisoners were told that their sentences could be reduced if they showed signs of repentance and rendered meritorious service. Any number of reductions could be earned totaling up to one-half the original sentence, but at least ten years of a life sentence had to be served. Probation or parole involved surveillance by the public security bureau or a grass-roots organization to which the convict periodically reported.

Youth crime

Social and economic reforms brought significant change to the People’s Republic of China and unfortunately, had the unintended consequence of disrupting the informal social control of families, neighborhood committees, and work units that the Chinese relied on to monitor its citizens. The breakdown in social structure was specifically evident in the crime rates of China's youth, those ages 18-25, and juveniles, those younger than 18. In 1990, these two subsets combined to account for approximately 70% of China's overall crime rate. ^[9] Crime by youth offenders has been a matter of grave concern to the post-Mao leadership. In common with most societies, nearly all those charged with violent crime have been under thirty-five years of age. Criminal law makes special provisions for juvenile offenders. Offenders between fourteen and sixteen years of age are to be held criminally liable only if they commit homicide, robbery, arson, or "other offenses which gravely jeopardize public order," and offenders between sixteen and eighteen years of age "shall be given a lighter or mitigated penalty." In most cases juvenile offenders charged with minor infractions are dealt with through the use of informal rehabilitation which is enforced by neighborhood committees or other administrative means. Formal rehabilitation, on the other hand, is for more serious offenses that still fall under administrative, rather than judicial, punishment. These offenders are sent to special work-study schools where the philosophy is to rehabilitate through education and strict discipline. In both situations, some of the community groups involved have been found to be abusive, as they derive authority to prevent delinquency from the government. The Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Law (1999) also affirms the guidelines established by the Juvenile Protection Law (1991) regarding the protection of accused and incarcerated juvenile offenders and the emphasis of rehabilitation through education in addition to punishment. In serious cases juvenile offenders usually are sent to one of the numerous reformatories reopened in most cities under the Ministry of Education beginning in 1978. The Chinese tactics for controlling juvenile delinquency rates is very different from methods employed in Western societies. China has incorporated into the JDPL their beliefs that education shapes thoughts and behavior and that society has a responsibility in delinquency prevention. While Western cultures typically enact legislation in response to criminal behaviors, China is adopting laws hoping to prevent children from becoming criminals. In the Juvenile Delinquent prisons, China really focuses on transforming the prisoners into better people through labor and education. China’s juvenile delinquency rate is 0.8% (China. 1970). The government brought the prisons closer to the cities where more work is available. Having the ability to do work while in prison helps reform the prisoners, so they will be prepared when they get out. Compared to the U.S. the juvenile system in China is more like a school, where the prisoners can study, work together in labs, workshops, training facilities and sporting grounds. In China, they are required to stay on track academically, in order to get their high school diploma or to get into a secondary education system. They also can take sources that will prepare them for when they get out of prison like cooking, sewing and computer work (Shaw, 2010). The government does this to help with overcrowding. Most juveniles who are in prison are there due to low self-control. The adolescents who are jobless, not in a relationship, who are male are most likely to be in prisoned. Parents of children who attend school, really strive for high achievement for their kids. Putting this kind of pressure on children makes the children have a higher respect for the parents if they were to be in prison. These parents are involved and make the child feel important, rather than the uninvolved parent who could care less. Hirschi believes that adolescences who are involved with the family, friends, and school have a higher self-control, so they consider their opinions before doing something that will offend them (Chui. Weng. 2018).

Crime rate

In 1987 the crime rate remained low by international standards, and Chinese cities were among the safest in the world. The court system had been reestablished, and standard criminal, procedural, civil, and economic codes had been developed.

Law schools, closed since the late 1950s, had been reopened, and new ones had been established to meet the growing need for lawyers and judges.

Law enforcement organizations had been reorganized, civilianized, and made answerable to the courts and the procuratorates. But it would be unrealistic to assume that the old system of rule by party fiat could be changed in a short period of time. Opposition to the changes was pervasive at every level of the party and the government. Even its strongest supporters insisted that the legal system must be developed in accordance with the four cardinal principles—upholding socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and Marxism–Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Given these limitations, it was clear that although much progress had been made in replacing the Mao era's arbitrary rule with a solid legal system, much still remained to be done. ^[10]

See also

• Law of the People's Republic of China
• Legal history of China
• Law enforcement in China
• Court system of the People's Republic of China
• Laogai
• Xinjiang reeducation camps

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/.