A woman in China has avoided jail for 10 years by becoming pregnant and giving birth to five babies successively in the past decade, local authorities have revealed.
The unidentified woman from China’s eastern Jiangsu province was sentenced to over nine years in jail for theft in 2011 but was allowed to serve her sentence outside of jail because she was pregnant at the time, the Donghai County People’s Procuratorate said in a post on its WeChat account last week.
Taking advantage of the exemption, she fell pregnant with a new baby each time her nursing period was about to end.
As a result, she escaped imprisonment and was put under community correction at home instead, despite committing more crimes in the past decade.
Local authorities finally sent her to jail last month after she fled home when she failed to get pregnant in time to avoid her jail sentence.
“Chief, I’m leaving home for a month. Will be back after I get pregnant,” read a message she sent to the head of the county’s justice bureau, which is responsible for her community correction, in March.
She then went missing and was apprehended on April 7 in nearby Lianyungang city through a joint effort from the local justice bureau, police, and prosecutors, according to the WeChat post.
“I am very regretful now. I shouldn’t have done those illegal things, nor should I have given birth to so many kids. It’s so irresponsible to them,” she was quoted as saying to the prosecutors.
A repeat offender, the woman was first caught stealing and sentenced to six months in jail with a two-year probation in 2009. She committed multiple thefts during her probation and received a nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence in 2011.
Having been convicted of unspecified offences several more times in the past decade, she now faces imprisonment of more than 10 years, the post said.
According to China’s Criminal Procedure Law, a female offender can be granted house arrest if she is pregnant or nursing a baby. The legal nursing period is 12 months.
In February, the Supreme People’s Court said in a press conference that it was aware of the high occurrence of female offenders avoiding imprisonment by deliberately getting pregnant.
Some legal experts have suggested lawmakers stop counting house arrest as time served as a countermeasure, but this loophole would only be closed in a future amendment to the law, the court said.
A similar case made newspaper headlines in 2015. A woman from Urumqi avoided jail for 10 years by claiming to be pregnant on 14 occasions.
At least 13 of the pregnancies were genuine local authorities later found. But unlike the Jiangsu case, none were carried to full term —she aborted them as soon as she was granted home confinement.
The woman, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for graft in 2005 at the age of 29, was not imprisoned until 2015.
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