PRISONS IN CHINA.
In China a curious custom prevails. If a man comnfits a crime punishable by imprisonment, and escapes before the police arrest him, his wifei his children, his mother—infant, “aff his relations that live with him —are secured as hostages and put in prison till the real culprit is caught. The Chinese prisons, as may be imagined, have to be large in order to carry out this system of family imprisonment, which in many cases lasts for years. The expemte the Chinese Government are put to in feeding the prisoners (says ‘Womanhood’) is not so great as might be expected in the circumstances, as they put the greater part of the burden of feeding the prisoners on their relatives or friends. If the prisoners do not happen to possess any, so much the worse for them, for the Government allowance of our money, about a penny a day, is hardly enough to keep even a Chinese prisoner alive. Women and children often manage; however, to linger on for years in this state gf semi-starvation, which .would kill a European in a few weeks. The prisons are shockingly dirty, and many of the pr.sonora, bdfch men and women, are chained in their edit
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Bibliographic details
Evening Star, Issue 11606, 17 June 1902, Page 8
Word Count
204PRISONS IN CHINA. Evening Star, Issue 11606, 17 June 1902, Page 8
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