Leniency and severity in street-level law enforcement in China

This chapter examines the main causes of leniency and severity in street-level law enforcement in China. It asks: given a civil offence in China, how many adjudications are harsh punishments and how many of them are lenient treatments? Who are likely to receive legal leniency? This chapter briefly reviews the history of severity and leniency in China's legal system and discuss two possible institutional bedrocks of severity and leniency by Chengguan officers, i.e., political expediency and Confucian benevolence. It examines patterns of civil law enforcement among Chengguan officers and finds that while there is severity during the course of law enforcement, there is leniency toward some groups of street venders if they are the elderly, women, the disable, etc. This chapter explains the variation in severity and leniency in terms of the government policy of balancing leniency with severity and Confucian tradition of leniency and severity.