China's labor camps close, but human rights groups say grim detention conditions linger Then, her brain supposedly washed clean of disobedient thoughts, she was sent to work. For months, she screwed in the plastic plugs at the end of ballpoint pens, working with only brief food and bathroom breaks as she fulfilled her daily quota of 12,000 pens. This was "reeducation through labor," China's way of reforming minor offenders - drug users and petty criminals - as well as government critics and people regarded by police as a nuisance. Last month, China announced it would finally close the much-criticized program as part of a series of measures supposed to improve the rule of law. But former prisoners are giving the move a lukewarm welcome. They say dissidents still face the prospect of being locked away, often without trial, in facilities that are grim and abusive - even if they will no longer involve forced labor and attempted brainwashing. Shen's problems began when her house was demolished to make way for a luxury apartment complex in Shanghai in 2003. The former factory worker had been petitioning the government for years for what she considered adequate compensation. She said she was rewarded for her efforts by being locked up repeatedly and sent to unregistered detention centers - spending a total of 650 days in them over the past decade. In 2012, after joining two demonstrations in support of people who had died in detention, she was sentenced without trial to nine months in a labor camp for disturbing the social order, according to documents she showed The Washington Post. Shen was released in August, one month ahead of schedule, as the labor camp system was wound down in and around Shanghai ahead of the formal national announcement. But she said the abolition of the camps was just a "smoke screen," a response to domestic and international pressure. "The government gave no explanation as to why it is abolishing this system," she said, speaking in her one-room apartment, with the television turned up loud so nosy neighbors could not listen in. Was it a mistake? If it was a mistake, if it did lock people up wrongly, then shouldn't the government come out and apologize? Shouldn't they clear the name and records of those who were wrongfully sent there? That lack of acknowledgment, she said, shows that the government is not serious about becoming truly law-abiding. "Government officials will use other methods, including extrajudicial ones like black jails, to intimidate and punish those who go against their will," she said. A qualified landmark Human Rights Watch says there were around 160,000 people in around 260 labor camps at the end of last year, although the number has been steadily dwindling ever since. Roughly half the prisoners were drug offenders, but the number also included burglars, pickpockets, sex workers, blackmailers and card tricksters, as well as an array of political prisoners: petitioners like Shen, people who criticized the government in public or online, members of underground Christian churches or banned spiritual movements such as the Falun Gong.