abstract:p=}}) are a network of extralegal detention centers established by Chinese security forces across the People's Republic of China in recent years. They are used mainly to detain, without trial, petitioners (shangfangzhe), who travel to seek redress for grievances unresolved at the local level.
The central government tolerates the existence of these patently unlawful blackjails, demonstrating that it continues to lack commitment to ending arbitrary detention.
People who bring their grievances to the central government as petitioners are routinely harassed, beaten and sent to labor camps as troublemakers or locked up in what are known as "black jails" in a kind of extralegal detention.