Prison Reform In The Late Qing Dynasty

The prison system in ancient feudal China was famous for its brutalness . After Opium War , with the spread of western political and judicial system in China the modern times' thoughts for prison modification with bourgeoisie characteristics gradually appeared . Because of the "Incident of Geng Zi", the Qing Dynasty was forced to carry out overall reform with bourgeoisie characteristics so as to save the crisis of dictatorship which would collapse . The reform of prison was one of the important issues of the "New Politics Movement" in the late of Qing. Just during the period, Qing Government got rid of the feudal management thoughts for prison which had lasted for several thousands of years and changed into the bourgeoisie thoughts for prison management. Meanwhile, the careful preparation had been made to carry out the prison reform. All those steps finally speeded up the change of feudal prison system into capitalism prison system.This paper is divided into following five parts::The first part is about the rising of modification thoughts for prison in modern times. During 260 years or so in Qing Dynasty, the autocratic monarchy reached to the extremest extent in China feudal period. Its prison system covered all the collections of different Dynasties, and the brutalness of prison also reached to the unprecedented level. With the confrontation and combination between China and foreign political legal systems after Opium War and the lose of extraterritoriality and the rise of international prison modification movement, the bourgeoisie modification group strongly asked to change the traditional prison management thoughts and to reform the prison system. At the same tune they proposed that the prison thoughts and management system with the thought of bourgeoisie humanitarianism should be adopted and the living conditions for prisoner should be improved in order to attain the objective of reeducating criminal. The rise of prison modification thoughts in modern times shook the base of feudal prison system and made preparation in thoughts and propaganda for prison reform in the late of Qing Dynasty.The second part is about the change of prison management thoughts in the late of Qing . If the prison modification thoughts in earlier period could be considered to be the weak appeal from bourgeoisie modification group, at this time all levels of government had the common sense for the prison modification. Zhang Zhi Dong, the first man of issuing the prison reform in Qing Government, put forward nine measures related to prison reform: prohibit lawsuit, reduce law papers, reduce punishment, focus on evidence, change illegal rules, teach living skills , care for the people concerned and appoint special commissioner . The issuance of prison reform measures taken by Zhang Zhi Dong marked the beginning of the change of prison system thoughts. Afterwards, Zhao Er Zhuan the governor of Shanxi province appealed to set up the "Prisoner Skill Teaching Post" to substitute for the tradition of joining army, exile etc . The assumption had dual significance for criminal law and prison system reform, which made a foundation for substitution of free criminal law system for exile system and also was the first sound of prison reform in the late of Qing. Besides, Wang Lu Kang the councilor and other people also raised the thoughts of prison reform. However, Shen Jia Ben the well-known bourgeoisie legal thinker in modern times, was the person integrated in the various thoughts of prison modification and the instructor for prison reform in the late of Qing. The base ofprison modification thoughts advocated by Shen Jia Ben was "Merciness". From this point, Shen Jia Ben opposed the tradition of high punishment, penalization and revenge and combined the "Merciness" with bourgeoisie legal thoughts. Finally he put forward the purpose of reformatory education for prison modification. The contents of reformatory education issued by Shen Jia Ben were to reeducate the criminal with the moral principles to praise the criminal get rid of crim...