Doors slam shut on 're-education' system

Memories of the controversial punishment and the fight to abolish it live on, Zhao Xu reports in Beijing.

One of the most startling pieces of news to emerge from the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee in November was the decision to abolish the long-standing, controversial correction system known as "re-education through labor", or laojiao.

The system originated in the mid-1950s as a means of dealing with "counterrevolutionaries" and "rightists", but from the 1980s its focus was expanded to target various forms of social deviancy, ranging from petty theft to prostitution and drug abuse. It enabled the police to sentence habitual petty criminals to up to four years detention without trial.