Cartea "Legal Reform and Administrative Detention Powers in China"

Legal Reform and Administrative Detention Powers in China   Inchide

Using a new conceptual framework, the author examines the processes of legal reform in post-socialist countries such as China. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of the 'field', the increasingly complex and contested processes of legal reform are analysed in relation to police powers. The impact of China's post-1978 legal reforms on police powers is examined through a detailed analysis of three administrative detention powers: detention for education of prostitutes; coercive drug rehabilitation; and re-education through labour. The debate surrounding the abolition in 1996 of detention for investigation (also known as shelter and investigation) is also considered. Despite over 20 years of legal reform, police powers remain poorly defined by law and subject to minimal legal constraint. They continue to be seriously and systematically abused. However, there has been both systematic and occasionally dramatic reform of these powers. This book considers the processes which have made these legal changes possible.



• Subject matter analysed from legal, historical and policy perspectives, enabling the study of law reform to be contextualised within the surrounding social order and policy imperatives of the Chinese state and the Chinese police in particular. • Grounded theoretical work which brings together strong empirical work with a new analytical approach to interpreting and understanding the subject matter under examination • The subject matter draws on Chinese language materials that are not available in English and are difficult to access even in Chinese, thus bringing novel materials to an English readership.



Contents



Part I. Introduction and Conceptual Framework: 1. The problems of legal reform of police administrative detention powers; 2. The legal field and the process of legal reform since 1978;

Part II. Social Order and Administrative Detention; 3. Historical antecedents: the 1950s and administrative detention; 4. Social order, the 'hard strike' and administrative detention powers; 5. Revival of administrative detention in the reform era: prostitutes and drug addicts; 6. Re-education through labour;

Part III. Legal Reform and its Impact on Administrative Detention: 7. Building a legal environment for police detention; 8. Supervision of police conduct: legalisation and contest; 9. Legal reform catches up with administrative detention;

Part IV. Analysis and Conclusion: 10. The field of law, the force of law and the powers that be.

Inchide