Tales of rehabilitation and realities of pain: The initiation ceremonies of incarceration

Based on extensive interviews with Chinese former drug users incarcerated because of illicit drug use, this chapter documents the painful experience of inmates in the laojiao, or 'reform through education', detention centres. Instead of 'rehabilitation', the detention centre's brutal 'initiation ceremonies' imposed on the inmates on arrival seem to echo a general experience of pain and humiliation for the inmates. These initiation ceremonies aim at socializing and 'prisonizing' the new inmates into obedient subjects. This combination of informal and formal violence represents a double-edged sword of pain, maybe not exclusive to the Chinese system, but with its own specific rationality in a Chinese philosophy of pain and control. While criminologists suggest that 'pain' is counterproductive to offender rehabilitation, the Chinese prison and inmate authority has actively used 'pain to train' the new inmates for the purpose of control. This chapter further argues that the experiences of pain stand in stark contrast to the official narratives of education. This contradiction has created a system of hypocrisy that can be as counterproductive for the inmates as the 'pain' involved in it.