Remolding Oneself: A Look at Tianjin Prison

Bai Yang, a university graduate sentenced to death in 1994 for murdering his wife, is an inmate at a new prison in Tianjin where prisoners can reduce their sentences if they change their behaviour.

"I have nothing to complain about," Bai told a group of journalists in perfect English during a rare visit organised by the Chinese prisons department in Tianjin, China's third largest city, about 150 kilometres southeast of Beijing.

The Tianjin prison is just one of hundreds of standard prisons in China, in which prisoners could have their terms shortened provided they have the willingness and guts to change deeds. However, some human rights groups in the world have been criticizing China's prisons for the so-called ``poor treatment" of detainees.

Tianjin prison is new, completed in 1999, and has a television set in every cell. Meals are substantial and prisoners often get cakes on their birthdays.

The institution gives insight into China's theory about how to handle prisoners -- by combining punishment and reform, with the official emphasis firmly on the second.

"I am not sure when I will be released," said Bai, whose sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1996 and has since been reduced for good behaviour and might be reduced further.

"As of today, I still have to serve 16 years," said the prisoner, who teaches English to about a dozen fellow prisoners three times a week.

Prisoners at Tianjin can reduce their sentences through good behaviour, using a complicated reward system.

They are constantly encouraged to have a good attitude in their work and studies and to obey the rules and cooperate with their wardens.

The prisoners can also earn the right to make extra telephone calls and to take their meals in prison with their families, said prison director Chen Ruijun.

Chen boasts that there has not been a single attempt to escape from the prison in the last few years and that the rate of recidivism is not more than 3-5 percent in the three years following release.

Prisoners' performances are marked on a chart which indicates the points awarded to each one. To have two years cut off his sentence, a prisoner needs to earn 180 points.

The punishment of solitary confinement is rarely used, and the prison only has 15 single cells. The maximum sentence in solitary confinement is 15 days, but it can be renewed.

"I am being reformed and I am learning about computer science," said Qiu Xiaoli, 47, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 1997 for fraud but whose sentence has already been reduced by two years.

Qiu and most of his fellow prisoners work between six and eight hours a day in a prison workshop where they paint plaster masks, earning a small wage that is put into a special accounts of their own, managed by the prison authorities.

"The only thing which I miss is my family," says Xu Shenglin, 42, a former accountant sentenced to six years in prison for misappropriating 70,000 yuans (US$8,500), even though his wife is with him in a room, with a large bed and television set, set aside for deserving prisoners.

Spousal visits can last three days, said the director.

Five followers of the banned cult Falungong are also kept at the prison, three of whom have already confessed to their crimes, said a police official at Tianjin.

"The two who have acknowledged their crimes continue to be reeducated," he added, refuting criticism of the system from older Chinese prisoners such as the leading political dissident Harry Wu.

"The older prisoners who have said or written negative things about Chinese prisons have political motivations which prove that they have not acknowledged their crimes," the police official said.

People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/