Legal Reforms and Deprivation of Liberty in Contemporary China

This volume investigates detention powers in today's China and offers an in-depth analysis of the debates surrounding attempts at reform.

Focusing not only on law and regulation but also on key events that have precipitated calls for change, the studies in this book assess the complexities inherent into the process of reform of institutions of detention in an authoritarian state.

The collection examines legal and institutional reforms to institutions of detention and imprisonment since the 1990s and is divided into three parts. It begins with the specific issues of criminal and administrative forms of deprivation of liberty and the relationship between reforms and criminal justice policy agendas. It then moves onto the academic and theoretical debates on the subject of imprisonment and detention.

The study concludes by assessing the meaning of institutional reforms in the context of the changing state-society relationship in contemporary China. This book will be of interest to scholars of Chinese law, politics and society, criminologists, human rights and comparative law.