Introduction – reasons for modifying penalties

The Sung dynasty was noteworthy for the combination of practices and policies that it used to modify the penalties suffered by those convicted of crimes. The various modifications seem to have been adopted either to strengthen security or to encourage proper behavior. Proper behavior, which for those guilty included personal reformation, was encouraged by enacting policies that allowed the alteration of actual punishments so that they would fit the particular circumstances of individual crimes and the particular characters of those who committed them. There was a search for justice, in the sense of fittingness, combined with the everpresent possibility of mercy from the sovereign. As we noted, during the Sung, many men sentenced for crimes carrying a nominal death penalty were actually punished using penal registration, thus providing the state with a pool of laborers and perhaps prompting in those so spared a sense of indebtedness to the ruler.

From very early in their history the Chinese ruling group emphasized the importance of fittingness. If the rulers of the state were to do violence to some of their subjects, the level of punishment had to be chosen for an appropriate reason, and the penalty had to be fitted carefully to the crime. However, in the most widely shared Chinese view, if an error was to be made, it should be on the side of mercy. The search for justice was almost always the avowed justification for modifying penalties, but justice tempered with mercy. Sung officials knew well the injunction from the classic Book of Historical Documents: “Rather than put to death an innocent person, the ruler should run the risk of irregularity and error.”