Foucault, 1977) without particular form of individuation engenders successful rehabilitation in China's prisons.
Even though recent empirical works probe the disciplinary nature of China's penal system (Li, 2018 Wu and Vander Beken, 2018 Zhang, 2022) with one article mentioned its ‘collective’ origin (Liu and Chui, 2018), little research investigates if this disciplinary effort under the idea of collectivity (cf. Yet, this statement must be viewed with Scepticism because most of these studies stop at the gates of the prison, or breach its surface somewhat barely or briefly, judging levels of harshness or humanity largely by metrics such as literary references and official reports. In People's Republic of China (PRC), to gaizao (reform and rehabilitate) criminal offenders into law-abiding citizens seems to have maintained as the core of the current prison system, with several scholars applaud for its effectiveness in achieving the primary target of Chinese imprisonment: rehabilitating criminals into a ‘new person’ (Liu, 1995 Du, 2004 Wu, 2016). Whether there is a global spread of such tendency that rehabilitative ideals have been reconfigured or virtually abandoned is somewhat highly debatable. The recent severe fiscal cut in the UK further deteriorates the in-prison conditions, leading to the side-lining of rehabilitation (Garside and Ford, 2016). Even though governments have continued to reclaim rehabilitative targets within penal policy, it is much less evident that this rehabilitative ideal has been emphasised in practice (Moore and Scraton, 2014 Maguire and Raynor, 2017 Bullock et al., 2018). The 20th century has witnessed the rise of a ‘rehabilitative ideal’ centred on social welfare and psychological treatment of prisoners (Cullen and Gendreau, 2001 Hollin, 2011) towards a favour of punitive discourses and practices emphasising incapacitation and deterrence (Garland, 2001 Pratt, 2007 Maguire et al., 2010). Nevertheless, such movement towards correction and rehabilitation within the US and UK prisons has never been stable. Unlike traditional definitions of power that are repressive and negative (Weber, 1978 Wartenberg, 1988), power as Foucault (1977) conceives it as productive and rehabilitative, where it shapes the actions of individuals and harnesses their bodily power to produce economic benefits. What makes Foucault's work so prominent is that his ground-breaking analysis of the actual technologies of penal power provides a distinctive lens on the sociology of punishment.
This preeminent work examines historical changes in the penal system in the modern era, a shift between two distinctive styles of punishment from sovereign power to a ‘modern’ power, which starts to affect the ‘soul’ of the subject with the aim of making them feel shame, and to train the body rather than strike it. ‘Disciplinary power’ is one of the central concepts in Foucault's most influential work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977). Officers' diligent and skilled use of control demonstrates a ‘tactical agreement’ that while prisoners as autonomous agents value their performances for early release, officers depend on the consent of the prisoners to get through the day. The rigorous political climate of increasing accountability further disrupts any ethos of rehabilitation. The findings suggest that rehabilitative interventions are implemented more for order and safety maintenance rather than eliciting deep contrition of prisoners. Yet, compliance and docility do not equate well rehabilitation. Drawing on interviews undertaken with 30 female parolees/ex-prisoners and 10 prison officers, this study argues that the collective discipline at selected prisons is a deepening and possible an extension of Foucauldian project. Although scholars have shown a continuing interest in probing the disciplinary nature of China's penal system, relatively few studies examine its ‘collective’ connotation of discipline and the effectiveness in achieving the primary target of Chinese imprisonment: rehabilitation.
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