An ex of mine sent me a message on Facebook. Apparently her son is in a Chinese jail for hashish possession. I raised this kid for six years. He’s a lovely bloke, but shouldn’t be so fucking stupid as to be in possession of drugs in China, agreed.
Mom is desperate, begging me to help.
What the fuck can I do to help?
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This is really hard to say but…
There probably isn’t anything you can do.
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That’s what I thought. Life is hard sometimes.
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I’m sorry.
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How much did he have?
I don’t know. A possession amount, I assume.
Well, there are larger and smaller amounts which would have some impact, I’d think. Seems like a good starting point for figuring stuff out, but unfortunately as said above options are limited for actually helping, I guess.
Too many unanswered questions.
Is he in a privately run jail? This makes a huge difference as there seems to be more avenues for negotiation.
What part of China?
What are the charges exactly?
Are you prepared to pay bribes?
Even with all of that the minimum will be 6 months hard labour and then another 6 months re-education camp. This is obviously not a first offense or if it is then he’s being used as a pawn or being made an example of (think Canadian, USA, or Australian citizens arrested on bogus charges as leverage).
This is risky. There is no guarantee, especially if they are foreign/taiwanese that if they pay bribes, it will result in a good outcome. They could just take the bribe, pocket it and do nothing or worse, charge her.
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The kid is apparently going to be detained for ten days on a minor possession charge. It still must be hell spending ten days in a Chinese jail.
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Private jails? What is this? The USA?
China doesn’t do private prison as far as I know.
But I hope he’s just being detained for 10 days followed by deportation.
One big lesson: DONT do drugs in China, not even pot. Pot is seen as though they are meth there. And they have death penalty for more than certain amount of drugs. Maybe not as bad as singapore (where they pretty much kill you for pot possession in the tiniest amount), but China is not the country for drugs.
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I wouldn’t sign up for it, but it could be worse. Hopefully an object lesson and no more.
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It’s still possible to bribe the local people in charge assuming it’s not a huge amount and handled by local jurisdiction.
My dad had 4 employees get locked up for tax issues with machine import. Many of the laws in China are up for interpretation and enforced selectively. He was only able to bribe for 2 people to get out of the country, while the other two there’s just nothing you can do. Not much a lawyer can do in China tbh.
Yawn. This bears no pertinence to my OP. 
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is this the already-made court decision? Then, I wouldn’t do anything that could make things worse.
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Possession of 5kg is a capital punishment case. It doesn’t sound like he is near that.
Minor drug possession should be 10-15 days in detention, a relatively small fine and, presumably, deportation. (See Article 71-71.)
He will be asked to sign an admission of guilt of some kind. No way around this and an apology for offending the sensibilities of the Chinese people is in order but best be sure that it’s not an admission of something larger than what he really did.
Suggestions to bribe officials are a terrible idea.
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10-15 days is much better than I was expecting to hear.
I’ve heard that basically in the past for small amounts.
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I read an article about an American who was in prison in Beijing for weed dealing.
Chinese prison is just boring. There is no exercise, library or activities. Its just men sitting in a room reading newspapers.
Damn, are you sure?