Rehabilitation as Performance: Symbolizing Penal Welfare in Chinese Community Corrections

Abstract The recent establishment of Chinese community-based corrections (CCC) signals Chinese reformers’ ostensible embrace of the rehabilitation ideal and a looming lenient turn in Chinese criminal justice policy. While a growing literature has studied the operational effects, social functions and political significance of CCC, little attention has been paid to the performative aspect or symbolic significance of China’s efforts at offender rehabilitation through community correctional processes. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in parole settings of two Chinese cities, we show how the CCC’s rehabilitative work practically operates as a form of performative governance, shedding light on the strategies and processes used by penal actors to achieve rehabilitative performance. In routine rehabilitative practices, justice officials typically collaborate with service professionals and/or parolees to forge a team performance—either by staging the fulfilment of indicators or by engaging in glorifying rituals. The study contends that when the implementation of rehabilitation is geared towards serving the interests of the state and is preoccupied with meeting bureaucratic ends, while ignoring the voices and precarious situations of offenders, the CCC enterprise of providing correctional services becomes a symbolic performance rather than a substantive accomplishment. The implications of the study for research and policy are discussed.