Narrative Rehabilitation: Manifestation of Chinese and Western Reform Ideals and Practices

• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20952398
• Date: 01 March 2021
• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Author: Xiaoye Zhang
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X20952398

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2021, Vol. 65(4) 373 –389

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20952398

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Article

Narrative Rehabilitation:

Manifestation of Chinese

and Western Reform

Ideals and Practices

Xiaoye Zhang1

Abstract

The existing literature has shown that in Western penal systems there is often

an official demand for narrative rehabilitation during treatment programs, and has

criticized the requirement for a narrative change to correspond with the “judicial-

correctional truth.” This study is based on participant observation in a male prison

in mainland China. Through a comparative lens, this paper found that offenders in

Western treatment programs are required to demonstrate a change in narrative

identity that is immersed in details from their personal history and from judicial

discourse, whereas the Chinese penal system scrutinizes individuality less and focuses

more on adherence to a unified narrative form and structure. While both systems

are concerned with social control and the legitimation of penal power, Chinese

prisons are less concerned with cognitive specifics and more with overt behavioral

compliance. Both practices of narrative rehabilitation may be insufficient in facilitating

the complex needs of offenders to desist from reoffending.

Keywords

prison studies, Chinese criminology, Chinese prisons, narrative criminology,

comparative criminology, offender rehabilitation, penology

Introduction

When offenders are admitted to prison, they are not just required to remain there for

the duration of their sentence but also to comply with a range of institutional demands.

1East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China

Corresponding Author:

Xiaoye Zhang, East China University of Political Science and Law, 555 Longyuan rd, Songjiang district,

Shanghai, 200042, China.

Email: 2944@ecupl.edu.cn

952398IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X20952398International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyXiaoye

research-article2020

374 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 65(4)

Disclosure and reconstruction of an offender’s autobiographical narrative is an impor-

tant aspect of offender rehabilitation in the Western correctional practices, with cogni-

tive and behavioral psychology as the main theoretical support (Bernfeld et al., 2003;

Bonta & Andrews, 2007; Cullen, 2012; Ogloff & Davis, 2004). To be able to talk about

past life experiences is essential for any psychological change to take place; therefore,

the narrative of an offender’s experience, especially their criminal offense in this con-

text, becomes the key arena for intervention. The narrative that offenders are expected

to produce about their past experience is based on individualized, professional knowl-

edge possessed by the authority. The offender’s success in showing a prosocial narra-

tive identity is often rewarded with early release or parole (Hall & Rossmanith, 2016).

This practice has drawn attention from several scholars seeking to provide a closer

examination of its processes and impact, and it has been criticized for its soft coercive-

ness, unfounded correlation to desistance from crime, and even for causing further

cognitive confusion and distortion for the offender (Fox, 1999; Hall & Rossmanith,

2016; Waldram, 2010, 2012; Warr, 2020).

Narrative rehabilitation refers to the prison authority’s requirement that offenders in

their custody provide certain types of storied discourses, as they are deemed useful for

the purpose of rehabilitation. Offenders’ narratives have been an important part of the

Chinese penal system since the start of the modern Chinese prison at the beginning of

the 1900s (Kiely, 2014). After the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in

1949, the Communist Party of China made education and reform of the imprisoned

population part of a unified effort to create a new country (Shaw, 1998). Rooted in the

Confucian tradition of changing people’s minds and thoughts through education and

through governance, the “rehabilitation ideal” of Chinese prisons reflects an under-

standing of deviance that insists on deviant thought as the most important causal factor

in aberrant behavior (Dikötter, 2002; Shaw, 1998; Wu & Vander Beken, 2018).

While thought cannot be directly observed and evaluated, the Chinese rehabilita-

tion ideal relies heavily on a person’s self-disclosure and self-criticism in its practice.

However, the goal, methods, and processes related to the Chinese penal demand for an

offender to change his narrative takes a different form than the treatment-based

demand made in the Western context. For example, writing about the reeducation of

sex workers in the earliest years of the PRC, Smith (2013, p. 212) uncovered informa-

tion from the Beijing city civic bureau archive (Beijing shi minzhengju) showing that

“reeducators claimed that their most effective study materials came [. . .] from the

internees’ own personal experiences. Cadres reportedly encouraged internees to ‘speak

bitterness’ and ‘to recount their personal histories of suffering.’ Instructors [. . .] then

used the ‘graphic stories from the students’ own lives’ to help all of the ‘students real-

ize the causes of their suffering’ and learn to identify ‘their true enemies’ as ‘the impe-

rialists, landlords, and Guomindang bandits.’” This practice was followed by

mobilizing offenders for voluntary labor through conducting self-criticism sessions

where they create another narrative about the same past but focus on their own incor-

rect thoughts in relation to socialism, and how they aim to carry out self-improvement

by meeting penal demands. The approach of extracting personal stories from the

offenders in this case demonstrates that there are major differences between the