ABSTRACT
With the advent of community justice in recent decades, community corrections has become a key component of the Western criminal justice and penal systems. In the US, the UK and other countries in the West, community corrections sanctions offer viable alternatives to imprisonment. Like some of its Western counterparts, community corrections in China operates as an intermediate sanction targeting offenders whose crimes are minor with minimal social harm. The promise of community corrections as a fix for mounting costs has been noted by Chinese officials. Many penal forms, such as Reform through Labour and Re-education through Labour, undertake ideological reform of the imprisoned through daily educational programs and labour work. The chapter discusses what is the underlying rationale of China's community corrections despite the official definition and delineation of it as a rehabilitative instrument? A streamlined process of community corrections in Shanghai consists of three stages – namely, receiving, punishment/correction and completion.
