淸代 笞杖刑의 집행과 죄인의 사망

초록

Corporal punishment was an intuitive punishment that corresponded with the purpose of general prevention of pre-modern punishment because it could show the public that the punishment would be applied directly to the criminal and that retribution would be imposed. Therefore, in Chinese history, corporal punishment was maintained until the end of the Qing, but there were significant differences. In this context, this study attempts to comprehensively explore the execution and purpose of caning, and the characteristics of the Qing judicial administration. In the Qing era, based on the practice of punishment centering on actual punishment, Qing government used caning as a light punishment limited to misdemeanors. Therefore, the 10 to 100 of caning in the code were converted to 4 to 40 executions, and efforts were put into the legal system to protect the standardization. The legal device for this was the law of “Executing a Sentence not in Accordance with the Rules,” which stipulated punishment tools and methods of execution. It seems that the standardization of the execution method actually secured a character as light punishment. The recognition that criminals who were punished by caning did not lead to death can be confirmed from the punishment system. In light of this, it can be assumed that in the Qing dynasty, it was common for criminals not to die if they were legally punished with a cane. Contrary to this perception, however, in actual judicial scene, there were cases in which criminals died as a result of caning, and among them, there were cases in which several criminals died in a short period of time. Since the death of multiple criminals was not such a common case even in the Qing era, the emperor thought that there was a possibility of local official’s abusing criminals. However, the cause of death was not explored from the inherent danger of corporal punishment. Until the abolition of corporal punishment at the end of the Qing Dynasty, no attempt was made to dispatch a government doctor to the site of the execution.

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