The Criminal Law Dependence of Human Rights Protection and Social Governance: Centered on the Abduction and Rescue of People with Mental Disabilities

Human rights are universal and should be protected by the rule of law. However, if social governance excessively relies on criminal law, it is likely to lead to great risks to the rule of law. When solving structural human rights issues such as the abduction and rescue of patients with mental disorders, it is especially prone to problems such as the simplification of governance initiatives and the neglect of the real demands of subjects. The online field investigation of the Xuzhou chained woman incident shows that public opinion and governance actions of the state were focused on the governance of trafficking crimes, while the core issue of rights protection for women with mental disorders has been ignored, reflecting the dependence of social governance and human rights protection on the path of criminal law in China. In order to fully realize the equal protection of human rights, it is necessary to properly learn from the qualitative research methods in the field of sociology, enter the concrete life situation of the parties, fully respect the subjectivity of “the protected”, hearing their voices, and letting them to participate (indirectly) in the construction process of law and policy as the subject.