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Black jails () are a network of extralegal detention centers established by Chinese security forces and private security companies across the People's Republic of China in recent years. They are used mainly to detain, without trial, petitioners (上访者,''shangfangzhe''), who travel to seek redress for grievances unresolved at the local level. The right to petition was available in ancient China, and was later revived by the communists, with important differences. Black jails have no official or legal status, differentiating them from detention centers, the criminal arrest process, or formal sentencing to jail or labor camps. They are in wide use in Beijing, in particular, and serve as holding locations for the many petitioners who travel to the central Office of Letters and Calls to petition.〔(Black jail guard convicted of rape ), Associated Press, 12 November 2009〕 The jails were introduced to replace the Custody and Repatriation system after it was abolished in 2003 following the notorious Sun Zhigang incident. The existence of such jails is acknowledged by at least part of the CCP officialdom, following a police raid of one of them and criminal trial of the company running it. According to human rights groups, black jails are a growing industry. The system includes so-called "interceptors",〔()〕 or "black guards", often sent by local or regional authorities, who abduct petitioners and hold them against their will or bundle them onto a bus to send them back to where they came from. Non-government sources have estimated the number of black jails in operation to be between 7 and 50. The facilities may be located in state-owned hotels, hostels, hospitals, psychiatric facilities, residential buildings, or government ministry buildings, among others. == Background == The appearance of black jails was the authorities' response to the use of the "letters and calls" system (also known as "petitioning"), which attempts to resolve disputes at the local level.〔Human Rights Watch, ("An Alleyway in Hell" ), 12 November 2009〕 As a modern version of the imperial tradition, reinstated by the communists after 1949, the petitioning system permits citizens to report local abuse of power to higher levels of government. Because local courts are beholden to local officials, however, and since pursuing redress through the legal system is too expensive for rural Chinese, petitioning in modern China has become the only channel for seeking redress.〔 Petitioners may begin their attempts for redress at the at local-level letters and calls office, which are located in courthouses or in township-level government offices. If unsatisfied, they can move up the hierarchy to provincial level offices and, at the highest level, the State Bureau for Letters and Visits in Beijing.〔HRW's "Alleyway" citing Li Li, "Life in a Struggle," Beijing Review, 4 May 2005, http://www.bjreview.cn/EN/En-2005/05-45-e/china-1.htm〕〔HRW's "Alleyway" citing Jonathan K. Ocko, "I'll take it all the way to Beijing: Capital appeals in the Qing," Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 47.2 (May 1988), p.294〕 The number of people using the petitioning system has increased since 1993, to the extent that the system has been strained for years. Official statistics indicate that petition offices annually handled around 10 million inquiries and complaints from petitioners from 2003 to 2007.〔HRW's "Alleyway" citing Li Huizi and Zhou Erjie, "China's public complaint department busiest office in Beijing," Xinhua News Agency, 2 September 2007, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/02/content_6142475.htm (accessed 11 August 2009)〕 However, despite its enduring nature and political support, the system has never been an effective mechanism for dealing with the complaints brought to it – largely because it is chronically overwhelmed by the number of people seeking redress.〔HRW's "Alleyway" citing Carl F. Minzner, "Xinfang: An Alternative to the Formal Chinese Legal System," Stanford Journal of International Law, vol. 42:1 (2006).〕 Allegedly, local officials, with the tolerance of public security authorities, establish the black jails as a way to ensure that complainants are detained, punished, and sent home so that these officials will not suffer demerits under rules that impose bureaucratic penalties when there is a large flow of petitioners from their areas. Black jails are used to protect government officials at the county, municipal, and provincial levels from financial and career advancement penalties. Unpublished local government documents describe penalties levied against local officials who fail to take decisive action when petitioners from their geographical area seek legal redress in provincial capitals and Beijing. The operators of black jails allegedly receive from those local-level governments daily cash payments of 150 yuan (US$22) to 200 yuan (US$29) per person.〔Human Rights Watch, ("China: Secret “Black Jails” Hide Severe Rights Abuses" ), 12 November 2009〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Black jails」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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