Research On Prison Reform In The Late Qing Dynasty

In the year of1840, with the outbreak of the Opium War, the ancient Chinese society arose a major change that is completely closed independent feudal China was forced to go to the world, and the Political Power of Qing Dynasty had to be transformed from the complete feudal into the half colonial. The traditional prison system had to be reformed, following the western pattern. By the impact of the state laws and culture of the Western powers, proponents of the traditional judicial prison made improvements and achieved certain results. From the system level surface, it completed the transition from the feudal prison system to the prison system of capitalism. It was the milestone in the Chinese legal history. Therefore, the study of late Qing Dynasty prison improved has an important significance to correctly grasp the changing context of the Chinese prison system and to correctly understand the prison system from the feudal prison system to the capitalist prison.This paper has four parts.In the first part, internal and external reasons are listed on the prison improvement in the later Qing Dynasty. From the internal aspect, the influence of decayed prison of early Qing Dynasty, the bourgeois revolutionary movement and the preparatory constitutional movement were the first three reasons. Qing Dynasty is the last feudal dynasty in the feudal society, and the prison system is already quite mature in the accumulation of2,000years of prison experience. But as the feudal autocratic rule coming to an end, the prison system in the Qing Dynasty became more dark and difficult to sustain. A t the same time, the large number of loss of sovereignty and the national crisis deepened promoted the rise of the early reformation movement and the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movement. The Qing government has to play the slogan of the Preparatory constitutional in order to curb the revolutionary situation to maintain the fell feudal rule, and then reached a consensus of the Prison Reform..Form the external aspect, there were also some reasons, mainly including the needs of the imperialist countries, the impact of Western capitalist countries prison system and the stimulation of international political relations. After the Opium War, the imperialist countries captured a large number of privileges in the aspects of military, political and economic. The sovereignty of Chinese people and the integrity of the Chinese judicial sovereignty have also been severely damaged. So the bourgeois reformists strongly urge to improve China’s old prison system. With the imperialist aggression, the legal concept of liberalism, equality, fraternity of Western bourgeois was introduced into China, and people came into contact with the advanced Western prison system and clearly recognized the backwardness of the national prison. The severe Qing government’s penalty and the dark prison politics were attacked by the international society and became the excuse of the westerners to seize the judicial privilege in China. Therefore, the Qing government was determined to make improvements.In the second part, the idea of the prison improvement is illustrated, especially the idea of the bourgeoisie reformists Zhang Zhidong and Shen Jia ben. The Qing government advocated a change in some of the methods under the premise of maintaining the feudal autocracy to continue to maintain the rule of order. Thus, by examining the management ideas the new prison in the West, the Qing government found the direction of change of the Chinese prison management idea. The ideas of Zhang Zhidong and Shen Jiaben, such as establishing the new style prison, training the prison officials, improving the criminal treatment and strengthening the education of prisoners, are further discussed.In the third part, some of the attempts on the prison improvement are mainly talked about. First, translating a large number of Western laws and regulations in order to draw on state-of-the-art in the Western legal system and values, broaden people horizon, update people’s concept. Many criminal laws and regulations were revised and formulated. Second, took the reform of the prison authorities. According to the principle of’Separation of Powers’, separated the administrative and judicial. Thirdly, the prison official’s training was paid much attention to. Without the qualified prison officials, the prison system could not be put into good use. So, training senior personnel of the prison management is of great significance. Finally, building model prisons in order to change the environment of the prison and to teach criminals process and to sure the criminals get the thorough transformation in prison.The fourth part is the comment on the prison improvement. From the perspective of the specific measures, prison reform in the late Qing Dynasty formulated China’s first prison codex and cultivated a large number of new prison management personnel, which are laid the foundation for the modern transformation of Chinese prisons. From the perspective of the ideological, it broadened people’s horizons and updated people’s concepts. And people have a new understanding of the prison function. The Qing prison improvement was a failure because most of prisons had not been improved. The main reasons for failure were such as lacking the intensity of improved implementation and the traditional concept of prison still entrenched.The prison improvement in the later Qing Dynasty played the extremely important role in the process of carrying on the new policy. It had the progressive significance to the later Chinese legislation and the judicial practice...