Visible body and invisible mind: Bureaucratic performance,self-rehabilitation,and the machinery of Chinese community corrections

Counting rehabilitative bodies

In China, as part of the government’s social services and justice work, CCC rehabilitation is mainly carried out by trained social workers or contracted service professionals, and offenders are the recipients of government-funded services. As such, social workers, community stakeholders, and offenders are often brought together to implement rehabilitation. Notably, this implementation process is administered by local justice agencies and is thus embedded in the administrative requirements of the government. When and how offenders are involved in rehabilitation programs is strictly controlled by judicial officials, who are supposed to follow the guidelines issued by judicial agencies. In fact, rehabilitation in China is managed and handled on a case-by-case basis, or the administration of CCC rehabilitation programs is a case processing system. Each offender represents a CCC case for judicial officials. In order to successfully complete the case, offenders are necessarily entangled with, and subjected to, the CCC bureaucratic system. Initially, they were often intimidated by the layers of CCC procedures and reams of paperwork when they entered or were assigned to specific rehabilitation programs. As one offender on probation put it:

Upon the receipt of my sentence from the court, I went to register with the local justice agency and was instructed to learn tons of rules and regulations related to community corrections. I spent almost a week grasping the procedure of community corrections. I know I need to understand the state’s requirements and try to live up to the expectations.

After registering with the justice authorities and knowing the workgroup assigned by the government, offenders were enrolled in rehabilitation programs formulated by social workers. In other words, offenders became penal “subjects” who were handed over to social workers who were charged with the task of rehabilitating offenders. Ideally, at that time, offenders should have been treated with the support, care, and assistance of social workers who applied scientific knowledge and provided professional skills to rehabilitate offenders. However, social workers were mainly instructed to provide rehabilitation based on the indicator-based content of services. For correctional social workers in the study, the fulfillment as well as the continuation of the service contract was evaluated according to how they dealt with the performance of the metrics. To this end, once they were assigned to the rehabilitation work, they were concerned with “getting the case done” at hand or case management, so they paid particular attention to how to fill in the numbers, measures, and variables listed in the contract.

Gradually, offenders were reduced to a set of cases that social workers tried to close. As several community corrections service providers noted, they felt that the completion of indicator-driven tasks and the overall evaluation of community stakeholders took precedence over the experience and well-being of offenders. One service provider, who had been working on offender rehabilitation in the community for 4 years, illustrated this identity-shifting process:

I thought I was going to bring a transformative process to my clients with my professional skills. However, much of our work revolved around cases and numbers, not people and their specific needs for recovery. It really takes me a great of time to think about how to finish the required number without breaking the government’s demands. Offenders merely became the specific number, or the quantity over the quality, of cases I was asked to process.

Moreover, performance indicators for measuring offenders’ successful rehabilitation were officially pre-offered and always subjected to local justice actors’ discretionary power. Thus, social workers were frequently instructed to, first and foremost, finish the task of fulfilling the service items as specified in the contract. Of course, offenders were jointly embroiled in the indicator-making process as they were particularly utilized to express the amount of correctional work that the government had done for offenders. That way, offenders mattered a great deal to justice agents’ work not because changes in their lives and behaviors were truly due to official rehabilitation efforts, but because they played an indispensable part in constituting performance-related metrics for justice bureaucracies. As one senior social worker put it:

Offenders now matter not because of their needs and personal problems we seek to address, but because the number of cases we handle plays a critical role in my performance evaluation, and they [the clients] thus make important counts in our work. You know, we get money from the government, and we have to finish a requisite number of cases. Think about it, without their cooperation, how can we carry on this work?

In fact, the tenets of professionalized rehabilitation work, including risk and needs assessment, individualized treatment formulation, and rebuilding offenders’ broken social ties, were reported as being downplayed or derailed in practice. For example, Alexis, who specialized in addiction treatment and had worked at CCC for about 3 years, was instead asked to provide moral and legal education to parolees. He felt this education was beyond his expertise, but he could not refuse because his contract with the local justice department required it. Otherwise, his contract could be terminated for noncompliance. As he explained in detail:

I design my therapy based on offenders’ individualized diagnoses, and I do not think all drug abusers or addicts have universal behavioral causes. Those offenders have dramatically different backgrounds and situations, and not all of them need this thought education. I think compulsory moral and legal education may waste my time and energy in doing the rehabilitative work, and more importantly, prove little effective on their behavioral alterations. Because of the contract requirement, I must do this unprofessional job [Feizhuanye gongzuo] for the government first, and they [justice officials] do not fully care about my risk-needs assessment and individualistic diagnosis for offenders.

In addition to serving as counts for social workers’ contract fulfillment, offenders were practically employed to meet bureaucratic ends in favor of justice officials. For many justice administrators, only meeting the performance indicators may not be enough; they need to make indexes more shining and outstanding because they could present themselves as capable and excellent officials. Based on our observations and interactions with CCC administrators, justice actors had a penchant for organizing massive activities or collective gatherings as part of offenders’ rehabilitative obligations. They thought those actions may indicate their official commitment to offenders’ lives and affections, while also giving the public an impression that the government was actually making meaningful and recognizable contributions to offenders’ reintegration into the community. Social workers and other professional service providers, as ancillary actors, were also frequently enlisted into design and arrange this sort of big event.

Specifically, Mona, a professional social worker who specialized in dealing with juvenile delinquency, helped justice officials organize a singing competition in which offenders under community-based supervision were required to participate. She described the confusion about her role in this job because it was beyond her professional scope. However, she had no other option but to complete the task in time because she was told that this was part of her service contract content. She was further asked to write a news report about this event of organizing a singing competition for parolees, which could help extend the governmental influence on parolees as well as community members. Mona explicated:

Justice officials told us that they have to fulfill indicator requirements, such as organizing how many collective activities in the community and recruiting how many professional service providers for the offender rehabilitation work. They need those numbers to obtain funding from the higher authority. To do so, justice actors pay much attention to those indicators’ completion, rather than to what professional expertise and skills are and whether or how our formulated programs work to alter offenders’ behaviors or motivations.

Furthermore, justice agencies were concerned not only with meeting indicator-based performance and presenting themselves as capable rehabilitators but also with the appearance of professionalism in the rehabilitation process. Justice officials wanted to present their services as a form of professional input into offender change. Driven by this desire for professionalism, justice actors demanded offenders’ cooperation to participate in any programs formulated by social workers, regardless of whether these programs were effective or even beneficial for offenders’ change (Tidmarsh, 2022).

For example, the correctional service contract entailed that social workers ought to organize two treatment workshops monthly and offenders were required to participate. In the beginning, professional service providers, especially mental doctors and therapists, considered this contract to be professional and promising. However, social workers incrementally realized the shortcoming of merely two workshops per month, arguing that it usually took four to five workshops within 1 month to effectively treat offenders, and this shortage may not eventually take effect to change offenders. As one correctional social worker elucidated:

I think justice officials may need this workshop thing to appear in the contract because this is generally what our service or treatment professionals do for rehabilitation. However, this looks professional but is not truly professional because it was created not based on our professional knowledge and evidence-based practices. I know they only need the words in the contract, and it looks good, right?

In some cases, the indicator imperative may lead justice actors to mix up or cluster different types of parolees into one workshop or offender group. Specifically, as required, one workshop or treatment conference may involve at least 20 participants. This requirement sometimes, however, failed to be met. To solve this problem, justice officials may blend diverse offenders into one group of 20 people. Consequently, while this action worked to satisfy the indicator requirement, it produced unanticipated impacts on parolees’ experiences. This point was raised by one experienced social worker who conveyed:

Honestly, I was trained to provide therapy to mentally disordered offenders in the community. When I’m involved in community corrections and organize therapy workshops, I use my psychological expertise to treat, and try to de-label, each offender in my workshop. But the justice agent assigned me a group of 20 participants whose criminal causes were tremendously different, and many of them had nothing to do with mental disorders. Some of them committed the offense of dangerous driving [Chinese version of DUI] and did not have any mental problems. When these offenders participated in my workshop, they felt upset and resistant to engagement in the program because they were forced to be labeled as people with mental illnesses. This is absurd, isn’t it?

In sum, during their time in the CCC, offenders served primarily as counts for the paperwork of justice bureaucracies, although offenders typically worked with social workers to produce desirable indicators. In their routines, justice officials were typically concerned with meeting metrics-related requirements, such as how many offenders were eventually unleashed from correctional control after participating in rehabilitation, or how many offenders failed to “swipe the card (Dakai)” or report their activities on time.

Meanwhile, due to the prevailing norms of meeting metrics first in rehabilitation, the social workers contracted by the government were primarily involved in the often-stressful task of producing and presenting good numbers to justice officials (Durnescu, 2011). In this way, the impressive numbers and completion of performance indicators formally indicated the final delivery of rehabilitative services to offenders. In practice, “strict control means generous love for offenders” became an informal but widely accepted notion, and both justice officials and social workers gradually equated the disciplinary management of offenders with their humane care for offenders (Fairbanks, 2011).

Crafting rehabilitative ceremonies

Offenders not only marked the body-related indicator for justice actors to implement rehabilitation, but were often deployed to take symbolic effects and help project a positive image of the state to the public. The CCC’s rehabilitative work, after all, represents the Chinese state’s endeavors at transforming offenders’ lives and promoting their well-being. The experiences and evaluation of offenders were thus seen as a vital testament to the effectiveness of the state’s investment in this penal enterprise. As such, offenders, often with their presence and guided actions, came to play an indispensable role in symbolizing the state’s penal power and communicating its political significance. As observed, offenders were frequently deployed or solicited to engage in what we term as glorification rituals where justice officials’ input were acknowledged and the state’s contributions were highlighted.

For example, in CCC, moral courses and legal learning were crucial components of Chinese rehabilitation, whose processes were implemented mainly by social workers but were under the stewardship of justice administrators. Offenders who were required to participate in the educational process were expected to undergo visibly positive changes in their lifestyles, attitudes, and thoughts. A few social workers, when assigned to this service, developed coursework and activities that worked to build up parolees’ trust with community actors and experience love and peace from offenders’ relatives or family members. Those service providers thus created what they called a “growth group (Chengzhang xiaozu)” designed to facilitate offenders’ reintegration back into the community through societal acceptance, love and charitable support. After offenders finished the coursework, justice officials demanded them to write a reflective report or a letter of thanks that should display remorse for their past wrongful conducts and express gratitude toward the government and the Party. Crucially, this thought report or letter submission was requisite for offenders’ successful completion of the moral and legal courses, which was also pivotal to their passing of rehabilitative program assessments. Julie, a social worker charged with the moral education component in the CCC, expounded in the interview:

This parolee’s letter of thanks matters a lot to the justice agency because it is part of the performance tool that the government could show the visible and truly experienced transformations brought by rehabilitative programs. And the letter was also reviewed. If the letter was not OK to the justice agency, it would be returned to the parolee who was asked to re-write and re-submit it.

Letters or reports were more than the places where offenders could “cooperate” with justice agencies to practice what we called “a glorification performance.” Questionnaires were also essential places through which offenders were mobilized to perform rehabilitation. At the end of the rehabilitation program, offenders were asked to fill out a survey about their experiences with the agency’s provision of rehabilitation services. As several offenders noted, many of the questions on the survey were designed to induce respondents to answer in a manner favorable to justice officials. For example, the survey included a question—“What is your most satisfying issue about the therapeutic treatment we provided to you?” Social workers expressed that regardless of the answers given by offenders, the result was always positive and thus became useful for justice agencies to create a public image of the benevolent rehabilitation service provider.

In addition, to amplify the influence of official rehabilitation work among community actors, justice personnel sometimes used a ritual of what we call “honoring and awarding conferences” that offenders were particularly encouraged to practice. Notably, this process of honoring and awarding was not for offenders who behaved well or made contributions during their participation in rehabilitative programs, but for justice agencies. The ritual functioned to send a message that parolees’ behavioral changes and successful completion of rehabilitation programs were due to the efforts of the justice agencies. For example, during our observation, we witnessed an impressive event in which an offender presented a delicately designed banner to justice officials after completing his rehabilitation program (see Figure 1). The praise—“Deep gratitude for the warm and humane rehabilitation services provided by the justice agency”—was conspicuously written on the banner. The tribute ritual was widely covered by the local media, giving the justice agency a bright and credible face.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The rehabilitative ritual of offenders thanking the justice agency.

Despite the peculiarly symbolic value of offenders in the state’s rehabilitation project, offenders were selectively represented, and justice officials often exercised their discretion to popularize or spotlight the state’s contribution to the “success” or “well-being” of offenders. For example, justice agencies often reported and disseminated typical cases (Dianxing anli) of successful parolees or probationers to community members. They did this to demonstrate that the state’s rehabilitative services were generously assisting or working “effectively” for offenders, sending a message that the Chinese state’s work within the CCC ought to be publicly affirmed and continually supported.

However, justice personnel could occasionally utilize strategic exclusion of offenders from the rehabilitation process. This was most often described in the context of justice actors who envisioned that offenders would not appear compliant or obedient during the rehabilitation process. One justice official suggested that in some situations, “we don’t want anyone to cause us problems in the process . . . or the participation of probationers didn’t seem to be conducive to presenting us as effective rehabilitators.” Strategic exclusion was usually achieved by discouraging offenders from fully participating in rehabilitation. As one correctional social worker noted, “chronic or habitual offenders, although qualified CCC subjects, were rarely channeled into rehabilitation programs, but were implicitly subject to close monitoring by justice actors.” In other situations, justice officials were concerned about offenders’ lack of cooperative skills, reformative potential, and manageability, which could cause friction with the rehabilitative task administered by justice agencies.

The foregoing analysis suggests that, in addition to being treated materially as counts in rehabilitation metrics, offenders can serve as symbols to showcase the state as an effective rehabilitator. By exploiting the symbolic or performative significance of offenders, the victory of official rehabilitation programs could be conveniently framed as a tribute to the state.

Cultivating rehabilitative selves

When offenders were constantly recruited or required to meet the justice agency’s indicator performance, the substitutive work of rehabilitation—efforts to address offenders’ material and psychological needs and structural precariousness—was downplayed or almost erased. As a result, offenders were faced with the double dilemma of meeting the requirements of the justice agency and alleviating their own chaotic and bitter situations. To successfully complete the CCC process, offenders reported that they had to develop rehabilitative strategies on their own, a process in which offenders discovered and used their own resources and networks to adjust their behavior into law-abiding forms while trying not to violate compliance requirements. For example, Jack, a parolee who was a rural-urban migrant worker with little schooling, told a correctional social worker:

I don’t feel it helpful to participate in rehabilitative processes because these programs or coursework did not solve my problems. They [justice actors] don’t know me, especially my personal problems and troubles. I just follow what they instructed me to do, not break that . . . that’s all. If I want to become a better person, I need to rely on myself, only my own efforts are reliable and available.

When offenders spoke of their involvement in rehabilitation as a rigid process that lacked attention or responsiveness to their needs (including dignity), frontline CCC workers and even other offenders often scolded them for “feeling sorry for their failures” and warned them to be obedient and docile. Indeed, justice officials often framed offenders’ involvement in CCC (and criminal justice more broadly) as a matter of personal failure and misfortune rather than a structural disadvantage. One probationer in our study elaborated on this point:

I often heard that it was my own fault to be embroiled in the criminal justice system. I should have been more careful and considerate, and then I could free myself from staying here [community corrections]. I felt I was not a lucky dog, right? Justice officials also often felt sorry for me.

Offenders gradually realized that the ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of their rehabilitation in CCC rested with the participants themselves, and they sensed the cues for self-rehabilitation (see also Kaye, 2012). For example, Josh, who participated in a behavior change workshop hosted by the local justice agency, discussed how his participation in the CCC was directed toward initiating a self-rehabilitation process and noted the need to take responsibility for his cognitive change and his life:

When I first took the course and listened to the instructions, justice officials instructed me that I come to CCC sites because I made trouble to the law and the state. I was told to become a new person and do good to the society, and my participation in the program was a chance to learn and change myself. I should treasure the opportunity provided by the justice system, and should bring trouble to the government again. I need to take care of myself by myself, not by others . . . I also met other participants in the program. They told me to become a better self. Otherwise, I will lead a terrible life in the community correctional process.

A few offenders who participated in our study noted that the first step in practicing self-rehabilitation was to come to terms with their disillusionment with the recovery work that had previously been lit to bring help, love, and hope into offenders’ lives. Offenders, especially those with a myriad of social disadvantages, had a clear sense of the considerable obstacles they might face and attempt to overcome upon their release from prison. However, prior to preparing for the challenges of life after prison, offenders had difficulty facing the reality of participating in CCC’s rehabilitation programs, which were perceived as not being practically rehabilitative. The majority of offenders reported frustration with their participation in the rehabilitation process without receiving any substantive benefits. As Tom said:

I thought that my engagement in these programs could save my efforts and relieve my anxiety about my experience of justice involvement. I hoped it could solve my problems, like I needed to find a stable job to pay my house mortgage and rear my children. After I completed this process, I felt it did not fare in my way . . . OK, I accept this reality, but the cruel thing is that I need to do those things or meet requirements by myself, yes, my own!

In many cases, offenders had to throw themselves into the practice of self-rehabilitation through self-learning and self-motivation. This point was particularly observed in situations where parolees were dedicated to “getting rehabilitative things done.” Unlike other community corrections subjects, parolees in China have typically served nearly half of their sentences in carceral institutions and have already internalized the idea that “people must bow their heads under the eaves.” ⁶ During their time in prison, they have learned and become accustomed to the performance evaluation requirements of correctional practitioners and have developed tactics to meet these requirements. While in prison, offenders have always tried to behave in ways that benefit them, such as earning the approval of correctional officers and receiving reduced sentences (Jianxing). In most cases, when transitioning from prison to community corrections, parolees seemed to have developed a form of “self-control” in themselves, the ability to habitually regulate and alter their responses to avoid undesirable behaviors, increase desirable ones, and achieve compliance-based requirements. Josh, a parolee who was involved in a drug treatment program in the community, noted:

Honestly, I am not a white paper when I enter the community corrections field. I have experience with how to cope with these correctional regulations and rules because I have served two years of sentence in prison. I know they [justice officials] like what kinds of offenders and when they are willing to give benefits or favorable treatment to us. This knowledge is critical for us to survive in the community. I learnt that in prison. Therefore, I could directly become self-motivated to do things that meet the requirements of community corrections.

As such, offenders were able to demonstrate that they would be successful in completing rehabilitation programs and that they would cause the least trouble or inconvenience to justice officials. To this end, they became more proactive in meeting the demands of community corrections officers, reporting their movements and daily activities in the community in a timely manner, and were more cooperative in writing letters of thanks to them when requested.

In fact, in the eyes of some offenders, compliance with justice officials did not imply the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs per se but served to reduce or minimize the possibility of intervention (or “interference” in the words of one parolee) by justice officials. As a result, they were able to devote more time and energy to self-rehabilitation or felt less interrupted. Several offenders in our study illustrated this point:

After experiencing my sentence in prison, especially the rehabilitative programs there, I know what would happen to me during my stay at the community corrections. It is not going to change my terribly struggling situations, but I do not really hope that the state [justice officials] comes to bother me. I need to live my own life. (interview 202103)

I just follow what justice officials instructed me to do. Just being no offensive to them is ok. I bear the complex process, like attendance and reporting, because I need more of my own time to do things good for me. (interview 202108)

Pretending to be cooperative and submissive is helpful for me to survive the complicated process of rehabilitation. That way, I am not a disturbing person to the justice agency, and I think they [justice actors] may not come to disturb me, right? (interview 202206)

For some offenders who are truly in need of rehabilitation services, their family life and support play an insurmountable role in facilitating their rehabilitation and recovery. They reported that in the face of less perceived contributions from official rehabilitation, relying on family support or personal networks became “natural” or “inevitable” for them to obey compliance-based rules and rehabilitate themselves. As many offenders mentioned, “we have to care for our own” (interviews 202105; 202228). Because of the paramount value placed on family in China and the strength of the support and care provided by family members or friends, offenders were able to obtain material and affective support to meet their reformative and reintegrative needs. As observed, their extensive involvement in family life reduced the likelihood of contact or contagion with deviant peers. Meanwhile, for many offenders who valued family reunification, following CCC rules or abstaining from transgressions meant repaying what they had received from the family during their rehabilitation processes.

For example, Joey migrated to the city from his rural hometown 6 years ago and lived with his wife and two children in a poor urban neighborhood. After serving 2 years in prison for his theft offense and then entering community corrections, he entered a drug treatment program due to his short history of drug addiction. Because of his low risk of recidivism, he was allowed to visit and live with his family members while in community corrections. He told us: “Although the drug treatment program was quite coercive and demanding, my wife trusted and supported me through the process.” He recalled the busy life of frequent travel between drug treatment facilities and his family, and he firmly believed that his unwavering efforts to comply with CCC rules would reward his wife’s love and expectation. During the interview, Joey placed more importance on the psychological impact of his family life and his wife’s support than on his time in formal programs. As he said:

You know, when I spent time with my children and wife, I felt like I was a normal citizen, not a bad guy as others thought. I love this period of time because I get love, care and support from them. My wife understands me a lot, and tells me not to give up. She did not blame me and helped me navigate the struggling life during the community corrections process. However, when I went to the drug agency, I seem to feel I do something wrong and have a deep sense of guilt. It’s like re-emphasizing the criminal label in my life over the process. I know I am in the reentry process, but the important thing is to return to what? It should not be returning to drug addiction, right? But being compelled to go there [drug treatment facilities in the community] makes me feel like going back to drug life.

Overall, as offenders felt frustrated and alienated during their participation in rehabilitation programs, they had to turn to self-rehabilitation strategies as a means of completing the rehabilitation task within the CCC. The process of self-rehabilitation involves two continuous steps. First, offenders use what they have learned about the expectations and rules of the justice system to present themselves as potentially successful candidates for program completion. For offenders in the community, mastering and fulfilling these CCC-related rules does not in itself help solve their dilemmas, but it does serve to minimize the amount of harassment from justice agencies that might impede self-rehabilitation. Second, the practice of self-rehabilitation is at once self-discipline, self-reliance, and self-improvement, albeit sometimes with the help of family and friends.