Controlling illicit drug users in China: From incarceration to community?

Date01 December 2019
Published date01 December 2019
DOI10.1177/0004865819844549
Subject MatterArticles
untitled
Article
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Controlling illicit
Criminology
2019, Vol. 52(4) 483–498
!
drug users in China:
The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
From incarceration
DOI: 10.1177/0004865819844549
journals.sagepub.com/home/anj
to community?
Xiaoyu Yuan
School of Criminal Justice, Shanghai University of Political Science
and Law, Shanghai, China
Abstract
Managing a population of illicit drug users remains essentially a ‘law and order’ issue for
neoliberal societies. There has been a wider disciplinary movement in the control of this
population from incarceration to risk management. This paper specifically examines the
community rehabilitation program in an urban city in China, in light of the claimed policy
change. Using in-depth interviews with illicit drug users, it reveals how state control has been
extended over this group. A comparative analysis with drug treatment in the West raises
some dissonances through crime control lens. Limitations of this study as well as suggestions
for future research are discussed.
Keywords
China, community drug treatment, control, risk assessment, risky population
Date received: 3 January 2019; accepted: 25 March 2019
Introduction
China has shifted from a socialist country to a neoliberal state since the late 1970s
(Ren, 2010). The planned socialist economy of pre-1978 gave way to a market
economy that maximizes commercial trade and interests. In the post-1978 reform era,
economic activities, urbanization and constant internal migration became buzzwords.
Corresponding author:
Xiaoyu Yuan, School of Criminal Justice, Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, No. 7989 Waiqingsong
Road, 201701 Shanghai, China.
Email: yuanxiaoyu2015@outlook.com

484
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 52(4)
Governing a diverse population through the turmoil of these rapid social changes posed
an unprecedented challenge for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As in any other
country, maintaining stability and securing economic development in a late modernity
categorized by insecurity and risks is never an easy task.
Having enjoyed a ‘drug-free’ society due to drug-eradication campaigns in the early
1950s (Liang, Lu, & Miethe, 2013), China witnessed a resurge of illicit drug use and
drug-related crimes in the post-1978 reform era. Perceiving a worsening social disorder,
the CCP adopted a social management system in the 1980s that integrates multiple
means (economic, social, political, educational, etc.) and mobilizes all societal sectors
to combat and prevent crime. This system for social prevention is known as ‘compre-
hensive social order management’ (shehui zhi’an zonghe zhili) and will be touched
upon later.
In the wake of the drug abuse that re-surfaced in the mid-to-late 1980s, China
adopted five different measures to counter addiction (Sapio, 2010). In addition to the
non-coercive measure of signing up at private rehabilitation clinics, the other four
measures involved the police and included the registration of drug addicts at the
police station, administrative detention, compulsory drug rehabilitation and compulso-
ry rehabilitation through labour. The latter two measures isolated illicit drug users from
the majority of society, preventing them from spreading or causing harm to others, and
went through re-structuring in 2008 with the adoption of Drug Prohibition Law. The
separation of custodial and noncustodial measures was set out, with the former referring
to compulsory drug rehabilitation and the latter to community-based treatment pro-
gram. Policymakers and scholars both seemed to welcome the community program (Hu,
2008), which allows illicit drug users to get rid of drug dependence in the community
(shequ jiedu), or consolidating the detox effects after release from a rehabilitation centre
(shequ kangfu).
This policy shift seems to accord with the broad trend in social control from the
‘carceral’ to ‘risk management’ of the problem population (Mugford, 1993) in some
Western countries. Few studies, however, have examined the extent to which China has
likewise moved from carceral control to embracing risk practice. Searching for the
answer to this question is also an engine of reflecting on the current discourse in drug
control policy in contemporary China, as well as providing a snapshot of its latest
development in the mode of governance. An analysis of literature and policy documents,
and interviews with illicit drug users, suggests that this field is embedded in coercive
police control through various mechanisms, and that the police retain ultimate power in
managing this population in the name of social stability. Contrary to the claimed shift
from carceral to risk assessment, or from state coercion to community slackening of
control, China’s recent move actually involves intensified surveillance. The paper then
proceeds with a limited comparative analysis with drug control in neoliberal societies.
Theses of risk and risk management
The thesis of risk society (Beck, 1992) remains indisputably one of the most influential
discourses in social theory in the past few decades. Everyday life in postmodern culture
has been full of insecurities, hazards and uncertainties. Human existence has faced
unprecedented threats and become ontologically insecure. In theoretical terms, risk is

Yuan
485
‘an objective entity, to be mastered by calculation, assessment and probability’ (Mythen
& Walklate, 2006, p. 1). Despite doubts and questions regarding the assumption that we
are currently inhabiting a ‘global risk society’ (Mythen & Walklate, 2006), the massive
presence of risk assessment of the offending population has become a defining theme in
the recent development of the criminal justice edifice. As Feeley and Simon (1992) note,
the rehabilitative or correctional aspirations of the old penology have given way to risk
management embraced by the new penology.
The usual calculations of risk in the criminal justice system serve three distinctive
purposes: risk control, risk management and risk reduction (Clear & Cadora, 2001).
In the past half a century in Western neoliberal societies, risk practice, and risk control
in particular, has triggered substantive concern over individual rights (Pratt, 2017),
including for those at the margins of society. Compared to the dominant mainstream
class, the marginal population is more likely to be subject to surveillance, discipline and
overt punishment in postmodern culture (Mugford, 1993; Young, 1999). Mugford
(1993) noted the tension between law enforcement – surveillance and discipline – and
harm reduction in drug control, which is rhetorically in line with risk assessment.
Harm minimization ideology began to gain popularity in some Western neoliberal
states in the 1980s (Room & Hall, 2013), as an antithesis or counteraction to the puni-
tive waves of the ‘war on drugs’. There is still ambiguity regarding what harm minimi-
zation entails (Miller, 2001); however, it is notable that various non-state sectors and
private organizations have formed partnerships with state apparatuses to provide social
services and treatment (Thomas, Bull, Dioso-Villa, & Smith, 2016). The criminal justice
system remains the pivotal site for drug treatment, and offers various programs to which
illicit drug users can be referred for treatment offered by various non-state actors. Those
who successfully conclude with these programs are exempted from prison sentence or a
criminal record (Hughes & Ritter, 2008). Situated at the community level, these thera-
peutic treatment agencies exert social control over illicit drug users. Not only that
treatment at the hands of private sectors adds another layer of control in the punish-
ment process, mostly through supervision and imposing the program conditions
(Lucken, 1997), but adverse effects such as net widening with these community drug
treatment programs can occur (Indermaur & Roberts, 2003). As such, punitive carceral
control seems to have faded away, whilst risk control in the form of community super-
vision comes to the fore.
In light of this development as part of the ‘new penology’ (Feeley & Simon, 1992;
Simon & Feeley, 2003), it would be interesting to examine community control and
treatment of drug addicts in contemporary China. As intended, community programs
are designed to promote the social reintegration of drug addicts, avoiding the labelling
and stigmatization effects normally associated with custodial treatment (Zeng, 2011).
However, to understand the present, there is necessity to sketch out the ‘old’ path that
China has come along in regulating illicit drugs and drug users.
Treating illicit drug users in China: Historical trajectories
Sapio (2010) noticed that the genesis of compulsory drug rehabilitation centres can be
traced back to the period of Republican China, at a time when widespread opium
smoking was perceived as a threat to the nation. The compulsory centres were

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Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 52(4)
transplanted by the CCP into its Soviet base areas, then the People’s Republic of China
and ended in the early 1950s. Compulsory rehabilitation was revived in the reform era
that witnessed a re-emergence of drug abuse, and eventually became entrenched in the
legal system and constituted an essential part of the police powers.
The police exercised coercive detention powers in governing drug users: administra-
tive detention, coercive rehabilitation at the compulsory centre (jiedusuo), and rehabil-
itation at the camps of...

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