Monkey House Blues by Dominic Stevenson

Author:Dominic Stevenson [Dominic Stevenson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Published: 2011-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

[8]

The Monkey House Rules

You had to hand it to the Chinese: they knew how to run a jail. Ti Lan Qiao, Shanghai Municipal Prison, is situated on the north shore of the Huangpu River in the middle of the city and houses some 5,000 inmates, mainly men. Built by the British at the turn of the century, it was later used by both the Japanese invaders and the Nationalists. It was considered a model prison by the local authorities due to its emphasis on Reform Through Labour, a term that I would come to hear like some gloomy mantra.

As well as labour, the jail was the administrative centre for Reform Through Education, which was translated for me by an officer –without the slightest hint of irony – as brainwashing. This was taken incredibly seriously, and the prison had its own TV station that beamedan endless stream of propaganda to the other jails and labour campsacross the region. Most officers approached their Reform Through Education duties with the tired resignation of a preacher who’s long since stopped believing, while a few came on like TV evangelists, haranguing the bored inmates with fire-and-brimstone speeches that could go on for hours.

The top brass at the jail took great pride in the low recidivism of the criminals that passed through their system, seeing it as vindication for the vapid sloganeering that was their stock in trade. In truth, there was a far more ominous explanation for most prisoners’ reluctance to return to crime after their stay in Ti Lan Qiao, chiefly the length of the sentences handed down to first offenders. A burglar, for instance, could expect a sentence of around eight years or more for a first offence, and would serve at least seven of those. On his release, Reformed Through Institutionalisation, he would be sent to a prearranged work unit where he’d work for breadline wages in a government factory. If he had no family to vouch for him, he’d be required to live on the premises in a quasi-Dickensian-workhouse environment. His community leaders would be informed, as would the inhabitants of his neighbourhood, and he might be required to make a public apology for ‘letting down the People’. Stripped of the life he once knew, a broken man, chained to the state, he’d most likely have neither the time nor the inclination to reoffend. The system had a brilliantly grim logic to it, which reasoned that if the average criminal was most active between the ages of 16 and 30, such draconian sentences – not to mention the post-prison regimen – would keep them out of circulation for most of the duration of their criminal life. There were no ‘career’ burglars or ‘habitual’ thieves, as we say in Britain. In China, a one-time thief stands out in his community like a one-handed Saudi.

As foreigners, we’d missed out on an important part of the Chineseprison experience and come straight to our final destination. All other prisoners were required to spend a month or so being inducted in 6th Brigade, where they had to learn the ‘Big Fifty-Eight’ off by heart.

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