The penal system in China is mostly composed of an administrative detention system and a judicial incarceration system. As of 2020, it is estimated that 1.7 million people had been incarcerated in China, which is the second-highest prison population after the
United States (USA). The country's
per-capita incarceration rate is 121 per 100,000 of the national population. China also retained the use of
death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
with the approval of the
Supreme People's Court
The Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China (SPC; ) is the highest court of the People's Republic of China. It hears appeals of cases from the high people's courts and is the trial court for cases about matters of national ...
, and there is a system of
death penalty with reprieve in which the sentence is suspended unless the convict commits another major crime within two years while he or she is detained. Discussions have been held in which some people have urged the government to increase its use of community correction, and they have also urged the Ministry of Justice to oversee administrative detainees as a way to prevent the police from acquiring too much power.
History
Penal labor was formalized in the 1950s, soon after the Chinese Communist Party won the
Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...
.
The Prison Law of the People's Republic of China was enacted on 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.
Prison enterprises
All prisons in China operate businesses which they use to fund their operations. Prison officers can earn bonuses for financial and business performance.
Population
Prisons managed by Ministry of Justice held 1,649,804 prisoners at mid-2015, result in a population rate of 118 per 100,000. Adding the number of detainees in
Ministry of Public Security's detention centers of 650,000 reported at 2009, would result a total population of 2,300,000, and raise the rate to 164 per 100,000.
In the same report, It is noted that female prisoners account for about 6.5%, juvenile for 0.8% and foreigners for 0.4% of the total prisoners population in Ministry of Justice's facilities.
Investigative detentions
Public security departments, People's Procuratorates, People's Courts and Supervisory Commissions can issue detention order, and the detainees are usually held in facilities managed by public security departments, though supervisory commissions usually take care of their own detainees. State security department have similar rights and functions as public security departments.
Delegates of the congress or local people's congress above county-level during their term are exempt from detention or criminal prosecution without prior approval from the standing committee of the corresponding legislature. The Chinese police and security services routinely make use of torture to obtain confessions and information from detained suspects.
Administrative
Public Security
Public security or public safety is the prevention of and protection from events that could endanger the safety and security of the public from significant danger, injury, or property damage. It is often conducted by a state government to ensure ...
officers can
summon
Evocation is the act of evoking, calling upon, or summoning a spirit, demon, deity or other supernatural agents, in the Western mystery tradition. Comparable practices exist in many religions and magical traditions and may employ the use of m ...
civilian for investigative purposes, and can use force when the civilian refuse to cooperate and when approved by a superior officer. ''Public Security Administration Punishment Law'' states police should not question citizen on grounds authorized exceed eight hours, unless the citizen has violation that could result in administrative detention, in which case, the questioning could be extended to 24 hours. ''Criminal Procedure Law'' states the police should not question someone for more than twelve hours, unless that someone is a major suspect of a crime, in which case it could be extended to twenty four hours.
If the police found enough evidence for a crime, they can submit it to a procurator and ask permission for arrest, or if there is limited evidence or considered misdemeanor, they can impose administrative detention for up to fourteen days.
State Security officers have similar rights and authorities as Public Security officers.
Procuratorial
The
procuratorates can approve arrest when there is a reasonable ground with requests from the police or sometimes on their own for public-servants-related crimes they investigate (which function has since been absorbed by Supervisory Commissions), after which the suspect is placed into Criminal (investigative) detention, which can last for two months, and with approval from superior office, can be extended to seven months.
Judicial
The
people's courts can summon citizens and with approval from its Chief Judge, detain those who disrupt judicial process or refuse to cooperate. Judicial detention be as long as fourteen days, usually under facilities of public security departments. It is authorized on different grounds in ''Criminal Procedure Law'', ''Civil Procedure Law'' and ''Administrative Procedure Law''.
Supervisory
The
supervisory commissions (established in March 2018) can detain
civil servants and politicians who are suspected of corruption when they have reasonable amount of evidence. Detentions must be approved by a superior commission or the national commission.
Political detention, or Liuzhi, can be applied for up to three month, which can be extended once for up to three month when approved from a superior commission. Civil servants detained are not always allowed to see anyone, including their lawyer. This is authorized under ''Supervision Law.''
Penalties
Administrative
The public security and state security departments are the two departments under the administrative branch that can limit one's freedom. For violation of ''Administration Penalty Law'', the police can impose penalties on their own, though those detained can file administrative review to its supervising department or file an administrative lawsuit to a court.
Administrative detention for misdemeanors outlined in ''Administrative Penalty Law'' for up to twenty days. Teenagers of sixteen years old or less and women who are pregnant or feeding an infant less than one years old are exempt. Teenagers aged sixteen to eighteen are exempt from their first misdemeanor.
Compulsory rehabilitation may be imposed on drug addicts who refuse or failed community rehabilitation or who began to reuse after previous community rehabilitation for a duration of two years ordinarily. Public security department issue the order for compulsory rehabilitation. Rehabilitation centers are often run by the public security department and, in some places, the judicial administrative department. There are concerns that this may give the public security organ too much power with little or no oversight. The effectiveness of compulsory rehabilitation is also questioned, and it is more often seen as a deterrence rather than rehabilitation.
Judicial
For those who are prosecuted and found guilty, the court may sentence them to following penalties that limit one's freedom in accordance with the law:
Public surveillance or Guanzhi (literally, Control) requires no jail time, and the convicted can return to his community immediately but must report their activities to the local police department or judicial administrative department regularly for the duration designated by the court from a minimum three months to a maximum two years, and with multiple crimes combined sentencing can reach three years. Guanzhi also require one's freedom of speech, association, publishing, protest etc. be limited unless approved by the designated reporting agency, though one can still vote and hold public offices. For those under Guanzhi, right to equal pay at work is protected by law.
Criminal detention or Juyi range from one month to six months in a place near one's residence, overseen by the local police department and the convicted is allowed return home one or two days per month. They may need to work while detained and will receive some pay.
Fixed-term imprisonment will range from six months to fifteen years, or when guilty of multiple crimes, the maximum will be twenty years or the combined sentenced time, whichever is less. If reduced from death penalty, the term will be twenty five years. If reduced from life imprisonment, the term will be twenty years.
Life imprisonment can almost always be reduced to fixed-term, though total time served must be no less than ten years. Life without parole was enacted into the Criminal Law on Dec 11, 2015, is applicable to those convicted with embezzlement.
Death penalty with two years reprieve will be commuted to life imprisonment if the convicted did not commit another serious crime within the two-year period or fixed-term imprisonment if the convicted helped solve a major crime or contributed the society greatly. Death penalty with reprieve, without parole can be automatically reduced to life without parole if another crime is not committed within the two-year period, from which point the sentence can no longer be commuted.
Death penalty with immediate execution must be approved by the Supreme People's Court. Death penalty is not applicable to pregnant women, minors, and in most cases seniors more than seventy years old. If a woman is found pregnant anytime while detained or incarcerated before execution even if she miscarried, the execution will be cancelled, and the sentence reverted, and the court must redetermine appropriate sentence.
If sentenced to imprisonment of any kind, pre-trial time detained will be deducted from the actual time needed to serve, and for those sentenced to public surveillance, one day detained will be count as two days served.
Administration
Prisons are managed by prison administration of local
departments of justice, and detention centers are managed by police departments.
For those sentenced to administrative or criminal detention, the holding cells are administrated by local police department. For those sentenced to fixed term or life imprisonment or death penalty, they are admitted into prisons managed by local prison administration overseen by Prison Administration Beaureu of Ministry of Justice.
Detention centers
Detention centers are managed by local public security department, overseen by Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the condition of those detention centers varies as there are no clear law on its operation but only internal regulations made by MPS and provincial department of public security.
Administrative Detention Center or Juliu Suo, literally "detain and stay facility", is used for administrative or judicial detention for usually less than twenty days. It is usually located within a public security station and guarded by the police. The detained are usually released within twenty days.
General Detention Center or Kanshou Suo, literally "watch and guard facility", is used for suspect of an ongoing criminal investigation as authorized by procurators or criminal detention as sentenced by court. Fixed-term imprisonment with less than three months of actual sentence at the time of the verdict is also served here. The perimeter of these facilities are watched by the
People's Armed Police
)
, abbreviation = PAP ("People's Armed Police") CAPF ("Chinese Armed Police Force"), formerly abbreviated''Wujing'' ( zh , s = 武警 , p = Wǔjǐng , l = Armed Police , labels = no ), or WJ as on vehicle license plates
, patch ...
(PAP), but administrated by the public security department.
Those who are punished or sentenced for a short time are not required to do labour, but those who are sentenced for a long time may need to. Good performance when working in the penal labor system can get time taken off a prisoner or detainee's sentence but conversely underperforming and failing to meet a production quota can get time added onto a sentence.
Sometimes these detention centers are located in the same place or closely together, with certain degree of separation.
Prisons
Prisons are usually large in size and they are supervised by the Bureau of Prisons Administration which is under the control of the Ministry of Justice in accordance with the ''Prison Law''. The only exception to this rule is
Qincheng Prison
The Ministry of Public Security Qincheng Prison () is a maximum-security prison located in Qincheng Village, Xingshou, Changping District, Beijing in the People's Republic of China. The prison was built in 1958 with aid from the Soviet Union ...
, which is managed by the Ministry of Public Security and is reported to have held high-profile convicts. Prisons have few deputies because they are headed by wardens who are assisted by teams of police. The administrators of the prisons are members of the People's Police. The perimeters of the prisons are watched by members of the People's Armed Police. A Procurator's Office supervises the prisons that fall under its jurisdiction, and it is required to ensure the protection of the rights of the prisoners and lawfully operate the prisons. The Prisons reportedly have better living conditions than the detention centers which are operated by the public security station, depending on where they are located.
Male adult prisoners, female prisoners and juvenile offenders are each held in separate facilities.
Almost all prisons in China operate within the penal labor system, some prisons have full-time sales staffs which are required to solicit orders from manufacturers and sub-contractors which are located in different parts of China. Prisoners may also be contracted out to companies as a source of cheap and obedient labor. The Chinese government does not provide sufficient funds to prisons and detention facilities and as a result, their staffs are forced to generate their own revenues. If the staffs of prisons and detention centers do not generate their own revenues, they will not be able to operate their prisons and detention centers.
Prisoners in Chinese prisons are systematically abused by guards and prison authorities,
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
is routinely used in Chinese jails, it is used for investigative and punitive purposes. All prisoners including criminals,
political prisoners
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although nu ...
, and
prisoners of conscience are subjected to torture and other forms of
violence
Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or Power (social and p ...
.
;Adult
The prisoners are subjected to
forced labor
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
, often under harsh and violent conditions. It was reported that most prisons operate on a point-based system, which means that prisoners who passed their line will receive extra compensation depending on how many extra points they have earned. The judge who presides over a prisoner's commutation trial will consider the prisoner's labor record evidence of his or her good behavior. The prison shall have a classroom and a reading room, and the prisoners shall receive an education.
Chinese law states that prisoners shall receive prompt medical treatment and it also states that prisons shall be equipped with infirmaries. The staffs of the prisons use a point-based system to evaluate the behavior of the prisoners.
According to Chinese law, female prisoners are supposed to be held in separate facilities and in those facilities, they will be watched by female officers, male officers are generally not allowed to enter these facilities and when they need to meet a prisoner for official purposes, they must be accompanied by a female officer.
However, it has been widely reported that the
sexual abuse
Sexual abuse or sex abuse, also referred to as molestation, is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another. Molestation often refers to an instance of sexual assa ...
of prisoners by authorities is widespread in the Chinese penal system.
The
International Society for Human Rights
The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) is an international non-governmental, non-profit human rights organization with Participative Status with the Council of Europe and is a member of the Liaison Committee of the Non-Governmental O ...
claims that female political prisoners are frequently
gang rape
Gang rape, also called serial gang rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape in scholarly literature,Ullman, S. E. (2013). 11 Multiple perpetrator rape victimization. Handbook on the Study of Multiple Perpetrator Rape: A Multidisciplinary Re ...
d on the order of prison authorities.
;Juvenile
Chinese law stipulates that those who are below the age of eighteen when they are sentenced will be sent to juvenile facilities, and those who reach the age of eighteen while they are detained will not be transferred if the remainder of their sentence is less than two years.
Community correction
Since the passage of the ''Community Correction Bill'' in 2016, discussions about it have been heated. The ''Community Correction Bill'' is part of the ''Eighth Amendment'' which was added to the ''Criminal Law'' in 2011, however, community correction has been implemented in different ways since 2003 because the ''Eighth Amendment'' to the ''Criminal Law'' does not contain clear instructions as to how ''Community Correction'' should be implemented. As a result, those who should be in community correction programs largely remain free, besides their monthly duty to report to police stations. And because of that, community correction is rarely granted to prisoners who apply for it for non-medical reasons. The legislation on community correction is expected to increase the use of such measures , reduce the size of the prison population and combat recidivism by better acclimatizing prisoners to the society.
Commutation
Commutation is offered to prisoners with good behavior, and should the administration of the prisons apply for commutation or parole, the intermediate court of the jurisdiction which the prison falls in, will open trial in order to decide on commutations and paroles based on material which is provided by the prison's staff and testimonies which are given by the prisoners, the guards and the cellmates. The procuratorate of the same jurisdiction will send a representative to these trials. For those who are sentenced to life or death with a reprieve, the commutation or parole of their sentences will be heard at the high court of corresponding jurisdiction.
Pardons
The
Constitution of China
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China is the supreme law of the People's Republic of China. It was adopted by the 5th National People's Congress on December 4, 1982, with further revisions about every five years. It is the fo ...
grants the
Standing Committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...
of the
National People's Congress
The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (NPC; ), or simply the National People's Congress, is constitutionally the supreme state authority and the national legislature of the People's Republic of China.
With 2, ...
the power to grant pardons and release prisoners, then issued by the
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
. On August 28, 2015,
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, s ...
signed the pardon order which resulted in the release of over thirty thousand prisoners, most of whom had participated in the
War of Resistance
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese ...
or the
Communist Revolution
A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution often, but not necessarily, inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism. Depending on the type of government, socialism can be used as an intermediate stage ...
. This is the eighth time of such pardon, and first time after
Chairman Mao
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC ...
and
President Liu's order of this scale.
See also
*
Law enforcement in China
Law enforcement in China consists of an extensive public security system and a variety of enforcement procedures used to maintain order in the country. Along with the courts and procuratorates, the country's judicial and public security agencie ...
*
Judicial system of China
The judicial branch, organized under the constitution and law, is one of five organs of power elected by the People's Congress, in the People's Republic of China.
According to the constitution, the court system is to exercise judicial pow ...
*
Capital punishment in China
Capital punishment in China is a legal penalty. It is commonly applied for murder and drug trafficking, although it is also a legal penalty for various other offenses. Executions are carried out by lethal injection or by shooting. In a survey c ...
*
Laws in China
*
Crime in China
Crime is present in various forms in China. The Chinese government does not release unified exact statistics on crime rates and the rate of criminal offending due to such information being considered sensitive. Scarce official statistics released ...
References
Further reading
* ''Essays on Jurisprudence of Prison Administration'' (监狱法学论丛) by Jurisprudence of Prison Administration Council of Chinese Association of Jurisprudence (中国法学会监狱法学研究会), Jurisprudence of Prison Administration Professional Committee of Chinese Association of Prison Management (监狱法学专业委员会) (2016)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Penal System In China
Judiciary of China