Penal Welfare or Penal Sovereignty? A Political Sociology of Recent Formalization of Chinese Community Corrections
| Author | Jize Jiang,Jingwei Liu |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221079793 |
| Published date | 01 October 2022 |
| Date | 01 October 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Penal Welfare or Penal
Sovereignty? A Political
Sociology of Recent
Formalization of Chinese
Community Corrections
Jize Jiang
School of Law, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics,
School of Law, 777 Guoding Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai,
200433
Jingwei Liu
East China University of Political Science and Law, School of
Criminal Justice, 1575 Wanhangdu Road, Changning District,
Shanghai, 200042
Abstract
In this study, we address two observed gaps in existing accounts on Chinese community
corrections (hereafter CCC): 1) lack of multilevel understanding of this penal institu-
tion’s local variations in a highly centralized penal regime; 2) inadequate scrutiny of pol-
itical logics of, and the authoritarian state’s significance in, its recent formal introduction.
Those limits may inhibit adequate understandings of state power and punishment in an
authoritarian polity like China. To that end, we argue for a multilayered and hybrid con-
ceptualization of CCC as an assemblage of penal welfare and penal sovereignty to under-
stand CCC’s formation and function. Fracturing the holistic entity of CCC, our study
challenges the approach to viewing it as a system of singular logics and unifying structure,
and contrasts three modes of operational practices across localities—bureaucratic, pro-
fessionalization, and technology-dominant models. Moreover, our analysis of its political
functions suggests that in effect penal sovereignty subjugates penal welfare within con-
temporary Chinese penality. Far from heralding the full-fledged rise of Chinese penal
welfare, this legal formalization represents a space created for the authoritarian state
to penetrate political ideologies, and to reclaim, consolidate and exercise sovereign
Corresponding author:
Jize Jiang, School of Law, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 777 Guoding Road, Shanghai, 200433.
Email: jiang.jize@mail.shufe.edu.cn
Article
Punishment & Society
2022, Vol. 24(4) 501–528
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745221079793
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
power through managerial penal strategies in a rapidly developing and differentiating
society.
Keywords
Community corrections, Chinese punishment, Penal welfarism, Penal sovereignty,
Politics of punishment
Introduction
A new wave of research on comparative punishment has appeared against the backdrop
of changes in the policies, discourses, and practices of the penal system in countries
around the world since the 1980s (Garland, 2018; Simon and Sparks, 2012). Scholars
have identified a host of explanatory variables and complex working mechanisms that
have produced shifts in penality across jurisdictions in late modern societies, especially
the dramatic growth of prison populations and the expanding penal system in the spec-
trum of social control in the U.S. and the UK (Campbell and Schoenfeld, 2013;
Garland, 2001; Gottschalk, 2014; Simon, 2007; Wacquant, 2009). While valuable for
providing rich empirical and theoretical insights into penal transformations and variations
in select countries, Southern Criminology has cast doubt on the generalizability of argu-
ments on punishment derived heavily from advanced democracies to other countries or
regions in the rest of world, which have various political economy arrangements,
diverse cultures, and differential levels of social development and organization
(Carrington, Hogg and Sozzo, 2016). Even though the comparative penology has
begun to document penal transformations in the global south such as Latino and Asian
countries, most of them focus on the study of severe sanctions (i.e. imprisonment,
capital punishment) and their relationships to changing societies, including democratiza-
tion (Cheliotis and Xenakis, 2016; Johnson, 2008; Super, 2013). Thus, that stream of
research has not yet adequately attended to penal dynamics beyond imprisonment (i.e.
non-custodial penalties) in non-western democracies (Robinson and McNeill, 2016).
In this paper we seek to broaden the research scope of punishment and society by
offering a case study on recent formalization of Chinese community corrections (here-
after CCC), which is indicated by the specialized enactment of The Law of Community
Corrections of People’s Republic of China (LCCPRC) in 2019. The CCC’s formal devel-
opment and institutional attributes provide critical opportunities for testing penal theories
and extending comparative studies of punishment to differing contexts. Despite a prolif-
eration of research on CCC since its inception, we note two significant gaps in existing
accounts that our study seeks to address, and in so doing, provide a refined understanding
of CCC: 1) lack of multilevel and diverse understanding of this penal institution across
local conditions in an even centralized penal regime; 2) inadequate scrutiny of CCC’s
political rationalities and meanings in an authoritarian state.
502 Punishment & Society 24(4)
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