By Jerome A. Cohen
China has reportedly eliminated the formal administrative detention system for sex workers (see BBC report), which was never successful in “reforming” the offenders. This is, of course, good news for other reasons as well. This sanction was sometimes used for political purposes to ensnare the alleged customers of sex workers, men who allegedly patronized prostitutes but whose real offense was conduct disliked by the regime. As the report indicates, prostitutes are still subject to up to 15 days of detention in a Public Security Bureau detention cell for violation of the Security Administration Punishment Law, which is also administered by the police. This constitutes a minor offense that in China is technically not a “crime”. Yet detention cell conditions are often extremely unpleasant in comparison with prison conditions for those who are formally convicted of “crimes”.
I wonder whether there is any support for formally eliminating long-term administrative custody for drug offenders, who used to constitute the majority of persons detained under “reeducation through labor.” To be sure, as Xinjiang’s massive administrative detentions demonstrate, trying to eliminate arbitrary police detention in China is a Whac-A-Mole game—just as you think a form of detention is gone, others keep popping up again under slightly revised names.