Mysterious deaths of suspects in policy custody is by now unfortunately an old topic for this blog. I have covered the issue several times in the past, discussing both the facts of specific incidents as well as the broader implications to rule of law in China.

Following the release of new regulations in Henan designed to combat this problem, I wrote the following:

You may have noticed that the press accounts of “mysterious” custodial deaths in China have increased in frequency lately. Each explanation seems more absurd than the last and include these now instant classics: death by playing “hide and seek,” death by drinking hot water, and death by ingesting pesticide.

There are two problems: first, the underlying crime of course (i.e. murder), and second, the cover-up. It’s the second issue that should concern the local and provincial governments, since these murders were committed by police and prison guards; the only way to stop that is to prosecute aggressively and provide better training.

On the issue of rule of law implications, I covered this most recently when discussing the Rio Tinto verdicts:

[T]he notion of rule of law is harmed most when the public loses faith in the system. Every time we hear of a person killed mysteriously in police custody, with the story bandied about incessantly online, it does serious damage to public perception of the penal system.

Which brings us to the latest incident. All I have at the moment is this Xinhua story, which contains very few details. I will update if I find out more:

A woman detainee died Thursday after falling from a third-floor window of a police station in east China’s Anhui Province.

Zuo Xiaoqin had been taken to the police station after she allegedly smashed the window of an excavator that had come to demolish her home in Chizhou City, said a statement from the Chizhou municipal government.

Zuo excused herself from police questioning, saying she wanted to use the bathroom, and jumped from a third-floor window, the statement said.

The police rushed her to a local hospital where she died.

The municipal government, police and procuratorate are investigating the death.

The obvious issues here relate to the underlying incident for which she was placed in custody. It sounds like a very common story, someone who is being evicted or whose home is being demolished; in this case, she was staring down the demolition itself.

The other details are too sketchy to be useful, and the police certainly have a lot of questions to answer regarding the detention. Whether someone would try to kill themselves by jumping out a 3rd floor window after being charged with this sort of crime — I really have no opinion on that.

The more important issues relate to very familiar topics: China’s income gap, disaffected individuals, real estate transfer issues, and the harmonious society.

On a side note, I am still mulling over a longer post on the recent school violence. All of these things seem connected these days, and it keeps coming back to China’s economic and fiscal policy and the ability of the government to reduce that income gap, provide an adequate social safety net, reduce corruption, and continue working on social justice matters. A tall order, but these are all things that Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao have been supporting for years – that’s the good news.