Facing Difference: Relations, Change and the Prison Sector in Contemporary China (From Comparing Prison Systems: Toward a Comparative and International Penology, P 289-336, 1998, Robert P. Weiss, Nigel South, eds. - See NCJ-178009)

• NCJ Number: 178015
• Author(s): Michael Dutton; Xu Zhangrun
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 48 pages
• Sale Source: Gordon and Breach Publishers
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Netherlands
• Note: International Studies in Global Change: Vol. 8

Annotation

This chapter examines the history of China’s penal system and contemporary changes.

Abstract

The chapter begins by tracing the various theoretical traditions that have fed into contemporary Chinese penal discourse. It then explores the social crisis that has forced a series of reforms to the system in recent years. No longer part of an overall social enterprise, the Chinese penal sector is simply one, albeit the largest and most important, of the strategies designed to combat crime. The various attempts to reform inmates through labor are increasingly rendered impotent in the face of fundamental changes to the social landscape. The various methods designed to imbue a selfless socialist work ethic among prisoners seem strangely arcane in a period when the dominant social ethos presents material accumulation as glorious. The chapter discusses labor reform, thought reform, social change, and penal reform. Notes, references