New Ghosts Old Ghosts: Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China

Much has been written about the laogai (sometimes likened to the Soviet gulag) in the People's Republic of China. Depending on the source the prisons are described as nonexistent enlightened institutions or hellish places that subject the inmates to degradation and misery. The system is commonly thought of (by admirers and critics alike) as having a measurable impact on the national economy and providing significant resources to the state. Based on research in classified documents and extensive interviews with former prisoners judicial personnel and other insiders and featuring case studies dealing with the three northwestern provinces this book examines such assertions on the basis of the facts about this underexamined subject in order to arrive at a detailed objective and realistic picture of the situation. In the case of each province under study the authors discuss the history of the provincial prison system and the impact that each has had at the macro meso and micro levels.