Rehabilitative Control and Penal Responsivity: Implementing Restraining Orders in Chinese Community Corrections

Abstract

To facilitate effective community supervision to reduce recidivism, Chinese penal authorities have collectively adopted the policy of restraining orders (RO), which aim to monitor selected offenders and restrict their activities while serving their sentences. Despite the burgeoning literature on its normative underpinnings in the context of Chinese community corrections (CCC), research has yet to empirically examine how RO works in practice and what it implies for both CCC in particular and Chinese penalty in general. Drawing on observational and interview data from various actors involved in the implementation of RO, we show how restraining orders function beyond the ostensible objectives of strengthening surveillance and ensuring orderly communities. More importantly, RO policy works to screen out a particularly risky group of offenders for targeted control, either through individualized treatment or appropriate self-governance, which is subsequently framed as “rehabilitative control” in Chinese penal governance. The evidence further reveals that while RO implementation is responsive to victims’ needs and mobilizes community actors, it symbolizes a modernist approach to Chinese social control described as “penal responsivity.” The use of ROs within the CCC to actually govern specific offenders (rather than merely as a tool of strict supervision) suggests emerging ends of Chinese justice that are increasingly geared toward collective interests, social harmony, and community stability, and that is, above all, directed by the Party-state.