In China, illicit drug use is an administrative offense and Chinese law dictates that drug users “must be rehabilitated.” In reality, police raids on drug users often drive them underground, away from methadone clinics, needle exchange sites, and other proven HIV prevention services. And every year Chinese police send tens of thousands of drug users to mandatory drug treatment centers, often for years, without trial or due process.

This report finds that most mandatory treatment centers, while ostensibly meant to provide drug treatment, do not actually offer forms of drug dependence treatment internationally recognized as effective. Mostly, drug users are forced to work or to spend their days in crowded cells little different from prisons.