It is a crime management tool used by socialist countries such as People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It was introduced from the former Soviet Union in 1950s. Criminals sentenced to imprisonment, who have the ability to work, are forced to reform through labor and become new people. It is one of the important means to reform criminals.

A slogan and slogan that often appears in prisons, through the forced labor of prisoners, achieves the purpose of approval by managers. In China and abroad, reeducation through labor and reeducation through labor are often confused, and China officials also refer to them as "secondary labor", but they are completely different. The latter is an administrative punishment system.

(20 13 12.28) The closing the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) adopted a decision on abolishing the relevant laws and regulations on reeducation through labor, which marked that the reeducation through labor system that had been implemented for more than 50 years was abolished according to law. )

The judicial organs in the United States also allow prisoners to engage in forced labor, but it is not called reform through labor.

In the reform through labor, the reform-through-labor institutions implement the policy of "combining punishment control with ideological reform, combining labor production with political education" and "reforming first, then producing". They not only carry out military control and forced labor, but also carry out ideological and political education, give revolutionary humanitarian treatment in life and urge them to turn over a new leaf.