China's Psychiatric Inquisition Dissent, Psychiatry and the Law in Post-1949 China - Law in East Asia Series

This study examines the misuse of forensic psychiatry custody in China since the late 1950s as an adjunct means - alongside the legal authorities' more frequent use of arrest, trial and imprisonment - of punishing and silencing political dissidents, spiritual nonconformists, whistleblowers and other critics of official corruption or malfeasance. The principal questions addressed in the book are: how common have such practices been in China during the successive main periods in the country's post-1949 history; how have these repressive practices been theorized and handled under the country's evolving criminal justice system; and why have the security authorities resorted to this, at first sight, uncharacteristically sophisticated form of state repression? On the basis of extensive archival research into several decades of China's legal and psychiatric literature, the study concludes that the use of psychiatric custody against dissidents and other similar groups has been more widespread in China than it was in the former Soviet Union. Series Editors: Anthony Dicks and Robin Munro.