Legal Reforms and Deprivation of Liberty in Contemporary China

The volume presents an extensive investigation into the process of reforms of detention powers in today’s China and offers an in-depth analysis of the debates surrounding the reformist attempts. The chapters in this collection demonstrate that legislative and institutional reforms in this area result from political opportunities - openings and tensions at the central institutional levels of political authority - and contingent social and political factors. The book examines legal and institutional reforms to institutions of detention and imprisonment that have occurred since the 1990s, with a particular focus on the 21st century. Its content follows three particular lines of enquiry concerning the issue of deprivation of liberty in contemporary China. The first deals with the academic and theoretical debates on the subject of imprisonment and detention. The related chapters explain the difficulties encountered in this area of research and understandings of the discourses of reform through labour in Western and Chinese scholarship. The second deals with the specific issues of criminal and administrative forms of deprivation of liberty, examining in particular the institutional and legislative dimensions, considering the relationship between reforms and criminal justice policy agendas. The third assesses the meaning of institutional reforms in the context of the changing state-society relationship in contemporary China.

Elisa Nesossi is an Australian Research Council Research Fellow at the Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University. Her research interests include Chinese law and institutions, comparative criminal justice and human rights law.

Sarah Biddulph is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor of Law at Melbourne Law School. Her research focuses on the Chinese legal system, with a particular focus on contemporary administrative, criminal procedure and labour law and the law regulating social and economic rights

Flora Sapio is an associate at the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University. She has published on Chinese criminal law, criminal justice, legal philosophy in China and the Chinese Communist Party regulatory system.

Susan Trevaskes is a professor and member of the Griffith Criminology Institute at Griffith University and an Adjunct Director of the Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University. Her main research interests include the death penalty, policing, drug crime, public shaming events and justice system reform in China.