Drug dealer mom finally facing prison term
Print Edition
nanjing drug dealer Zhi Hui, 35, set an example to follow after evading prison five times on the grounds that she is a mother.
Zhi, a single mother of three, was pregnant with her oldest son when she was first caught in 2011 for possession of 150 grams of meth and heroin.
“The police said I could post bail and stay at home. Then after a year, I accidentally became pregnant again. I needed to make money to raise my children, so I had a third baby to stay away from jail and sustain my drug business,” Zhi told Xinhua news agency in an interview.
Wei Yuqing, a police officer who investigated Zhi’s crimes, said: “Several major drug dealers said they had encouraged their female friends to learn from Zhi‚ to have babies to avoid jail.”
Chinese criminal law stipulates that women who are pregnant or breastfeeding may post bail instead of serving a jail sentence. Though the law also says repeat offenders will be imprisoned, a lack of social services for children makes the authorities reluctant to send mothers to jail.
“The humanitarian leeway has been used by drug traffickers as a loophole. They use their own children to defy legal punishment,” said Ji Shengzhi, director of the eastern city’s anti-drug squad.
In a 2014 case, eight mothers were arrested and 25.9 kilograms of drugs confiscated.
“These drug dealing women seem undeterred. Every time they are caught, a larger amount of drugs is found,” Ji said.
Zhi, who has a son and two daughters, was released on bail five times between 2011 and 2015.
“Zhi was required to report to her community during bail, but she made efforts to skirt monitoring and expand her drug business,” Wei said.
Shielded by her motherhood status, her empire grew. Out of around 100 kilograms of drugs seized every year, Zhi’s business represented about a fifth of the total, Wei said.
However, last March she was caught with 15.7 kilograms of meth and heroin. After successfully dodging prison time for half a decade, authorities had finally had enough and she is now awaiting sentence.
“These drug-dealing moms must be punished. Otherwise, more people will follow suit,” said Ji.
A nationwide regulation providing better social services for the children of offenders in January 2015 may have paved the way for Zhi’s incarceration.
It says that drug addicts, traffickers, gamblers, sex offenders and child abusers will be stripped of guardianship while civil affairs departments are required to establish institutions to take interim custody of the children and find foster families for them.
However, the scheme has been hampered by a lack of venues, and shortages of funds and manpower. In Nanjing’s Qinhuai District several children whose parents were stripped of guardianship have had to live in senior care centers.
The city has asked community social service centers to provide help for minors who are vagrants, beggars, left-behind, victims of abuse and in similar situations, said Zhou Xinhua, a director with the Nanjing Civil Affairs Bureau.
Though these organizations provide short-term help for the children, they have difficulty keeping them for an extended period of time, he said.
Zhu Hong, director of the Nanjing Orphanage, said several children whose parents are in jail are staying in the orphanage.
Zhi said her mother, who has polio, is fighting for guardianship of her children. “But I know it is impossible for her to keep them,” she said.
“A death sentence would be a relief for me, but my mother and my children will continue to suffer.”
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