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The women in the detention center

My name is A-qiao. After graduating from police school, I chose to work in a detention center.

Even though everyone says that being a correctional officer is scary, I was young and wanted to prove myself, so I took the job. I ended up staying there for eight years.

Detention centers are temporary holding sites for suspects awaiting court judgment. The detainees have a very different mental state from prison inmates. In prison, the inmates know how long their sentences are, so they have something to look forward to. But in the detention center, facing an uncertain legal process, everyone is under a heavy mental burden. A lot of them can’t sleep at night. They don’t really talk about their worries while they’re inside—instead, they like to distract themselves with lighter topics, like, “that doctor today was so hot, that male officer is so hot”…that kind of thing.

People tend to think that women get all flustered when they run into trouble. But what I’ve seen is that, once they go into detention, many women suppress their feelings and do what they can to cope with their situation. But they’re still under enormous pressure. For the most part, women in the detention center stop getting their periods. Some of them might even go a year, two years, without their periods.

Many of them also gain weight. The most extreme case I saw was one woman gaining almost 8 kilograms in a month. When they feel empty emotionally, they eat. In addition to the food we serve them, they can use their own money to buy snacks at the snack counter; and repeat.

There was a period where, in order to provide them with some distraction, I took the electronic scale from the infirmary and moved it into the doorway of the common area, and had them weigh themselves one by one. Even though they wear loose clothing while inside, and don’t worry about looking nice, I found that they were just like any other women—they cared quite a lot about their weight.

During that period, everyone started competing to see who could eat the least, so their focus shifted in that direction.

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A-mei’s story

A-mei was your typical Sichuan girl: clear pale skin, dark black hair, pretty, clever, and skilled in handiwork. At first, I couldn’t believe the crime she was charged with: bigamy.

I thought, bigamy is a civil offense, not criminal—why would she be in detention? Out of curiosity, I started talking with her, and she told me her story very matter-of-factly.

Her “husband” A-bao had already been married prior to getting together with her. His wife bore him four daughters, but he wanted a son. The two of them split without filing the official papers. After A-bao and A-mei met, they lived together as husband and wife and had a little girl together. After getting with A-mei, A-bao brought two of the daughters he had with his ex to live with them. But tragically, one day A-bao beat one of those daughters to death, so it became a criminal case.

When a stepmother and stepdaughter live together, if one day the child dies, people might instinctually blame the stepmother. But in this case it wasn’t A-mei’s fault; her neighbor could testify that she never hit the child. A-mei felt that at most, she had been negligent—she hadn’t been quite as good to her stepdaughters as she was to her own daughter.

But as A-mei tells it, A-bao was a monster. He treated his own daughters worse than dogs. His little girl was only 8 years old when he beat her to death. I saw the autopsy report, but I couldn’t bear to read it: The girl’s organs had ruptured and her body was covered in cigarette burns.

In the end A-bao got a heavy sentence—whether it was a life sentence or death penalty I can’t really remember anymore. But A-mei got only seven months.

It seemed to me that she had an easier time in detention than many others.

She was good with her hands, and did some very fun things with the limited resources in the detention center. For example, one time she roped everyone into making a “layer cake” out of steamed rice, decorated with raisins and crackers.

I once asked her what she did for a living, and she said she didn’t work because her husband gave her money.

At the time, I wanted to teach her a thing or two. I told her, “Women still need to make their own living. You can’t depend on men. When you get out you should find yourself a job and take good care of your daughter.”

She listened, but I don’t know if she took it to heart.

After A-mei got out, her WeChat Moments feed was full of pictures of her hands dripping in gold rings, of her partying it up with a bunch of men and going back to that lifestyle. Later, I deleted her from my contacts—I haven’t been in touch since. She’s set in her ways, but then, she’s not doing anything against the law. She’s getting by on her looks and charisma, even sending her daughter back to her hometown to be raised by her own mother. It was one way of living.

I remember when I was in school, I saw a TV drama about female criminals called Red Spider. I used to pity the women in “Red Spider,” but my “political” stance was clear-cut: they had to be reformed.

But after I started working and came face-to-face with actual suspects, I felt that I couldn’t apply my standards to everyone. A-mei had her personal philosophy and felt pretty good about her actions, and we simply couldn’t see eye-to-eye.