In describing the apparently increased sense of solidarity among prisoners, the Ministry of Justice found that:
In the past, prisoners looked on mutual supervision and reporting other prisoners’ illegal or criminal behavior as a way of establishing merit and atoning for their crimes, and as a manifestation of their willingness to draw close to the government and show enthusiasm for reform. Nowadays prisoners believe in caring for themselves, covering up for each other and cultivating good relationships with each other. Many prisoners believe that ‘the more friends, the more opportunities,’ and that the more ‘brothers’ there are in prison, the better they can help supply each other’s needs, share each others cares and burdens, and that after leaving prison, they will have more friends to help them find a way of making a living. Among the prisoners there have developed both the psychological state and the self-aggrandizing behavior of relying on connections, loyalty to friends, and of praising fellow-prisoners’ good behavior but not reporting their transgressions, so that even when criminal behavior occurs among the prisoners, nobody reports it. In a number off serious cases occurring in the system in recent years, others in the offender’s mutual supervision group, even the head of the group, and the prisoners responsible for control of the offender have known the details ahead of time, but pretended not to know, and did not report it to the government’s cadres.
The willingness of prisoners to cooperate with each other, thus undermining the labor reform system’s ability to ‘use prisoners to control prisoners’ was found by the Ministry and by other writers on labor reform to be accompanied by a weakening of the authoritative role of cadres vis-a-vis the prisoner. This was ideally a relationship in which the cadre, representing and carrying out the ‘dictatorship’ of the state, both punished and reformed the prisoner. Incidents like those described in the discussion of resistance to reform and of crime inside the labor reform system did not fit the ideal. Neither did instances of cadres using prisoners to do business outside the prison walls or the presence in areas like Shanghai of prisoners whose families were wealthy enough to keep them supplied with food and spending money. One commentator even questioned the use of production contracts between cadre and prisoner within the labor reform system, because it gave the two, at least symbolically, an equal status.
The Ministry of Justice lamented this change, observing that ‘Nowadays some prisoners consciously or unconsciously place themselves on an equal footing with cadres...Some make an emotional investment in cadres, giving them money and gifts...there have been some cadres whose consciousness of [their role in carrying out] dictatorship has been dampened, and the boundaries between [them and] the prisoners have been obscured.’ Other sources accused cadres of fraternizing with criminals or of being too soft on them due to feelings of sympathy that had a basis in their common working-class background. These changes in human relationships within the walls and fences of the labor reform system were accompanied, the Ministry of Justice and others observed, by changes in the relationship between the prisoner and society outside the camps...rather than draw a clear line between themselves and a family member who had been imprisoned, an increasing number of family members used connections or money to attempt to get the prisoner’s sentence reduced or to have him released on medical furlough. Others continued to support the prisoner with liberal gifts of food and money.
The Ministry of Justice also complained of a growing tendency for families to extend support and concealment to escaped prisoners, and to give released prisoners a warm welcome, rather than ostracize them. At the same time, however, the sources indicate an increasing problem with prejudice against former prisoners in society at large....
Prejudice against the ex-convict began in the labor reform system itself, where it was enshrined in the laws and regulations dealing with the placement of labor reform and labor reeducation prisoners back into society after completion of sentence. The state always retained a number of prisoners for ‘forced job placement’ (liuchang jiuye) at the labor reform camp after completion of their sentences. Such prisoners were given higher pay and more personal freedom than labor reform prisoners, but they continued to be guarded by uniformed cadres and could be forcibly prevented from leaving the vicinity of the labor reform camp. From the mid-1980s onward, however, forced job placement came to be less important and less coercive. Fewer prisoners were subject to retention for labor after completion of their sentences, and restrictions on the personal freedom and freedom of movement of persons ‘retained for labor’ were eased.
When prisoners were returned to society, there were restrictions on where they might live, what sort of job they might have and what level of wages they might be paid. The overall policy in the first half of the 1980s was to return prisoners to the rural areas if at all possible, and to be particularly cautious about returning them to major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. Prisoners themselves were reported to be aware not only of these regulations, but also of the prejudice which they could be expected to receive from society as a whole. Analysis of the ‘state of mind’ (xinqing) or of the ‘psychology’ (xinli) of the prisoner repeatedly pointed to his or her fear that there was no future to look forward to, and that discrimination is all that one can expect from society after release. Both prejudice against prisoners shown in the regulations concerning their release and the expectation of discrimination from the outside world indicate the extremely limited faith which the system and the people actually put in the efficacy of reform through labor.
Lack of confidence in the ability of labor reform to transform criminal offenders into useful and reliable workers was evident in the increasing difficulty of labor reform units in placing released regular prisoners in regular, full-time jobs with work units. From the point of view of the labor reform units, one of the changes in their work brought about by the economic reforms of the 1980s was that it was no longer an easy task to place released prisoners in work units by simple administrative order. Prior to the economic reforms, if a criminal had a work unit, he could be returned to it. If he did not, a unit could be told to accept him as a worker. If he were a peasant, he could be returned to his work brigade.
When the economic reform program gave production units more fiscal autonomy and a greater degree of control over the management of their work force, they made it much more difficult for the labor reform system to settle released prisoners back into society. In a study of policies regarding the return of prisoners to society, Wang Yanxin and Zhen Jianping explain that before the economic reforms of the 1980s, a labor reform unit needed only to contact the local labor office, which would arrange assignment of released prisoners to local units. With the reforms, they note, came an increasingly complex labor market, which involved not only the labor offices, but also a number of other government organs: those responsible for industry and commerce, taxation, health and sanitation, management of urban beautification and so on. Because labor reform units did not have any connections with these other government organs, they were at a disadvantage in arranging job assignments in the new labor market.
Another problem was that in the labor market of the 1980s, a work unit might not necessarily have any quota for new workers. If it did, its increased power to manage the work force meant that it could refuse to hire released prisoners, either out of sheer prejudice or because released prisoners - largely poorly educated and unskilled - were not competitive on the labor market. The situation led Wang and Zhen to state bluntly that because of these difficulties, none of China’s various policies concerning the return of released prisoners to society worked very well.
The problem faced by prisoners returning to society were demonstrated in follow-up research done by the Tianjin Labor Reform Bureau on prisoners released from labor reform and reeducation in Tianjin from August 1983 through July 1984. Of the released prisoners surveyed, less than one third of those who where urban residents were able to find a full-time job. About half were either self-employed or temporarily employed, and another 19% were unemployed. Of those who had been employed before arrest, only 19% were taken back by their original work units. By comparison, 81% of former criminals who had been employed had been taken back by their work units in 1980.
This research also points to the difficulty of arranging follow-up ‘help and education’ (bangjiao) for 40% or more of released prisoners, and to the failure of the authorities to bring families actively into the effort to exercise continued supervision and reform of released prisoners. Part of the problem was that a small number of the families of prisoners utterly rejected their criminal offspring. Other families could not afford to support the newly released prisoner. In still more cases, the problem was said to be the same as that which caused the offender to become a criminal in the first place - that he was the product of a dysfunctional family. In such cases, a return to the family was seen as a return to the same environment that was thought to have contributed to the problem of criminality in the first place.
The difficulties associated with the return of prisoners to society might be expected to lead to increased recidivism. In fact, recidivism is described in the literature as being a relatively small (in comparison to the United States and foreign countries) but growing concern. The research on prisoners released from labor reform in Tianjin...found a very low rate of recidivism - 6.73%. At the same time, prisoners who had ‘entered the palace’ two or three times were said to comprise a growing proportion of the prisoner population.
- Harold M. Tanner, Strike Hard!: Anti-Crime Campaigns and Chinese Criminal Justice, 1979-1985.Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. p . 160-164.
