Convicts as Officials

Chapter 2 describes convict politics at the central court. Former convicts were entrusted with power, serving as important officials or even chancellors. Approximately twenty percent of recorded high officials throughout the two centuries of the Western Han had once been condemned; some of them even received the death penalty but managed to reascend to the center of politics. At the same time, officials easily fell foul of the law and became convicts themselves. In a high-risk job, approximately forty percent of high officials, during their tenure, were accused of violating the law and received punishments ranging from hard labor to the death penalty. Severe tension emerged between the nature of the law and the status of convicts, between the lawful and the guilty, and between the philosophical elaboration on the treatment of criminals and the actual practice.