A new report this week from Human Rights Watch peers into China’s Draconian and ineffective incarceration of people struggling with drug addiction.
China has plenty of problems with its harsh, sprawling prison system, and its treatment of drug users is no exception. Police send drug users to mandatory “rehabilitiation centers” for a minimum stay of two years, without any trial or appeal. The conditions are deplorable, with no medical treatment for drug addiction at all, frequent beatings, inedible food and showers only once a month.
Human Rights Watch reports that at any given time, more than half a million Chinese citizens are subject to this treatment, for infractions as small as a single positive drug test.
“They call them detoxification centers, but everyone knows that detox takes a few days, not two years,” Human Rights Watch epidemiologist Joseph Amon told the New York Times this week. “The basic concept is inhumane and flawed.”
The Times article, however, goes on to consider whether China may be undergoing something of a painful transition on drug issues and drug treatment. While the government continues to send thousands to stark work camps, officials have quietly allowed smaller treatment centers to thrive in China’s large cities. Back in 2007, the Washington Post reported on the spread of true treatment centers as an alternative to mandatory government facilities and the openness of officials to learn from successes at these centers.
From the Times this week:
Yu Jingtao, whose organization, Beijing Harm Reduction Group, distributes 30,000 clean needles a month, said the government was slowly moving toward the drug treatment model common in much of the developed world. “We’re just caught in a transition period,” said Mr. Yu, himself a recovering addict. “Transition periods are never very pretty.”
China’s prisons are rife with human rights abuses and counterproductive policies, and it remains to be seen whether sprouts of progress like real drug treatment centers are window-dressing or a sign of a society beginning to change.