Abolition of re-education through labor a milestone

Tang Hui, the "petitioner mother", was detained at a laojiao center for repeatedly petitioning the authorities to take tougher action against those who she said had raped her 11-year-old daughter and forced her into prostitution. Ren Jianyu, a former village official, was ordered to undergo laojiao for criticizing the then Chongqing government.

In January 2013, Meng Jianzhu, head of the CPC Central Committee's Politics and Law Commission, announced that the laojiao system would cease to be applied by the end of the year. In March, Premier Li Keqiang said the same thing.

The CPC's decision to abolish the laojiao system has to be translated into law by the national legislature by the end of this year. That doesn't mean that later offenders will not be targeted. Instead, efforts will be made to improve the laws on the punishment and rehabilitation of offenders and to optimize the community correctional programs, as the plenum's resolution declared.

Despite the laojiao system having serious defects, various attempts to implement a legal reform have failed in the past, primarily because of a dispute between police authorities and judicial organs over having the final say in the decision-making process. Although the abolition of laojiao has been announced, the dispute over decision-making will not be resolved. Yet police are going to lose a substantial part of their legal power no matter what laws follow.

The abolition of laojiao, without doubt, represents an important advance toward the rule of law. Now China has to make sure that the laojiao reform doesn't end up with another legal instrument that leaves room for human rights violations. For this reason, it is necessary to grant the judiciary enough independence so as to impose meaningful checks on police power. Ultimately, the success of the laojiao reform depends on other fundamental legal reforms, especially those that involve the functioning of courts and prosecutorial organs.

The author is head of the China section at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law.

(China Daily 12/05/2013 page9)