Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China, 1895-1949 (review)

The subject of prison reform in late Qing and republican China has often been overlooked in English-language scholarship. As Frank Dikötter's research demonstrates, the topic of prison reform can serve as a springboard for a multifaceted study of the cultural and intellectual history of this important period in modern Chinese history. According to Dikötter, prison reform combined the "local appropriation of global ideas" with distinctly Chinese "moral and cognitive traditions." Characterizing the history of prison reform as a global history, the author notes that "internationally circulated discourses and practices of punishment intersected locally with concrete ideological and political configurations" and "engendered new varieties of incarceration" (p. 6). The author convincingly argues that prison reform was not simply a case of Chinese reformers imitating the West but also a shared goal of modernizing elites worldwide. In China the abolition of extraterritoriality was an important motivation for reform but the goal of obtaining "moral parity" with advanced nations around the globe was equally important. Similarly, the complete reform of criminals through education resonated with Chinese tradition, and the use of model prisons as a "dominant pedagogical strategy" had roots in imperial China.

The centerpiece of Chinese prison reform that provided the link between Chinese tradition and contemporary prison reform was the concept of ganhua, which "referred to moral reformation by an emotional appeal to the feelings of a criminal" (p. 48). The fact that education was central to the task of moral transformation leads Dikötter to observe that modern prison reform in China was both "radically new and remarkably traditional." Utilizing previously unexploited sources, including the Beijing municipal, Liaoning and Jiangsu provincial, and national archives, the author examines prison rules and administration and reconstructs fascinating tales of life inside Chinese prisons. The tenor of the introduction suggests a theoretical approach to the topic, but ensuing chapters include concrete explorations of prison administration as well as examinations of discursive fields.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 examines the movement for prison reform during the late Qing, in chapter 2, and civilian prisons during the early republic, in chapter 3. An examination of the diaries of Qing officials who traveled abroad and the writings of late-Qing reformers in chapter 2 demonstrates that an interest in prison reform and Western models arose soon after the Opium War. This interest was clearly related to the desire to eliminate one of the pretexts for extraterritoriality, but it was also a goal of modernization and thus represented the desire to achieve "moral parity" with advanced nations. Chapter 3 reconstructs the early history of model prisons in Beijing and in Fengtian and Jiangsu Provinces, relying on archival sources that cover a broad range of topics. Generated by the judicial bureaucracy, these sources are richly descriptive, but an analysis of them is lacking. For example, there is mention of a wide array of religious materials introduced to facilitate ganhua but little discussion of their content, efficacy, or impact. Some of the archival materials consist of rules and regulations. In the case of the Beijing prison the author can corroborate the archival sources using Sidney Gamble's contemporaneous field research, but often the reader is presented a welter of information without means to evaluate it.

Part 2 contains a study of penology, in chapter 4, and criminology, in chapter 5, under the Guomindang. In these chapters the author discusses the writings of some of the leading Chinese experts in the fields of criminology and penology in the republican period. Chinese experts were clearly conversant with the latest research on prison reform—although, as the author notes, Chinese experts often held opinions that were at odds with the received wisdom. For example, there was an abiding concern with the reformative power of education in China even when the idea had lost favor among international experts. Part 3 returns to an exploration of prison administration under...