Residential Surveillance: Evolution of a Janus-Faced Measure
Posted: 9 Aug 2015
Date Written: October 12, 2013
Abstract
In the course of the effort to both enhance the appeal and standardise the application and enforcement of ‘residential surveillance’ (jianshi juzhu), the coercive measure has become dissociated from its earliest intentions as an alternative to custodial detention. Numerous factors ranging from the broader patterns of socio-economic change in China to the context in which crime-fighting activity is carried out and evaluated have conditioned the way that residential surveillance has been implemented in practice, and over the years it has developed problematic tendencies that have led many to advocate its abolition. Despite an upsurge of public concern, the 2012 Criminal Procedure Law failed to address fundamental problems associated with the practice of residential surveillance in a ‘designated location’ and opted to retain residential surveillance in a dual and contradictory form that emphasises its role as an alternative to custodial detention while simultaneously legalising many of the measure’s problematic aspects. Failure to properly acknowledge the contradictions inherent in residential surveillance is likely to ensure both that it remains both difficult to apply in its ‘ordinary’ form and that the enforcement of its exceptional form continues to endanger the core individual rights of criminal suspects subjected to it.
Keywords: Chinese law, criminal procedure, coercive measures, residential surveillance, legal reform
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