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This article examines the rhetoric and representation of Chinese capital case records from the eighteenth century, when, as part of a far-reaching crackdown on violent crime, the use of capital punishment was extended to crimes committed by ‘bare sticks’, a common term for the underclass of crime-prone males. Adopting a strategy to suppress crime that combined ‘criminal profiling’ with the presumed deterrent power of capital punishment, Qing emperors presented serious challenges to the judicial bureaucracy. Ideologically, imposing harsh sentences and profiling bare sticks posed dilemmas, for county magistrates who operated within the confines of the rigidly bureaucratized structure of judicial and sentencing review. The article argues that county magistrates utilized case records to present sympathetic representations of rural poverty and despair that was at odds with the imperial denunciations of violent crime. Rooted in the longstanding judicial ethos to seek leniency and save life, hallmarks of Chinese criminal justice for centuries, these emotional depictions sent a clear message to the central authorities that economic conditions, rather than the moral failings of bare sticks, played an important role in undermining familial stability and social order.

Bare Sticks and Naked Pity : Rhetoric and Representation in Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Capital Case Records