On December 29, 1994, the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress passed the People's Republic of China Prison Law. For the first time in its post-revolution history, the system of penal detention and correction in China was collectively referred to as a prison system. Certainly, prisons had been mentioned before this, but then the term invariably referred to the older prison buildings in cities that were an inheritance from the pre-Communist government. The penal system, up until 1994, was referred to collectively as the "reform through labor" system (laogai).

Th…