Amputative Sentencing

You really gotta hand it to the justice system.

"Stop, thief! I'll have your hands for a trophy, street rat!"

— Razoul, Aladdin

In the pre-modern world, one of the more common forms of criminal punishment was amputation. It fulfilled multiple purposes of providing a harsh deterrent to crime not necessarily worthy of execution, ostracizing the offender by giving them a visible Mark of Shame, making a public example of the criminal, and not having to worry about the logistics of incarcerating them for a long period of time.

Commonly targeted parts of the body include the hands and feet, ears, nose, tongue, and genitals. Usually, the specific target would be relevant to the nature of the crime: a thief would have their hand cut off, a runaway prisoner would have their foot cut off, a sexual criminal would be castrated, and so on.

There is plenty of Truth in Television for this, with amputation being a common criminal sentence worldwide through the Early Modern era. During The Enlightenment, however, prisons were seen as a more humane, corrective, and societally beneficial punishment for most forms of crime, causing amputation to largely be phased out of legal codes in Europe and the Americas by the 19th century. Nowadays, it is largely regarded as torture and a violation of prisoners' human rights. Some countries still have laws prescribing amputation on the books, though actual enforcement varies.

A subtrope of An Arm and a Leg and Corporal Punishment, and a sister trope to A Taste of the Lash, Mark of Shame, and Slave Brand. Compare Yubitsume, which is about cutting off one's own finger as penance in the Yakuza. May overlap with Qurac, Countrystan, "Arabian Nights" Days, and other settings inspired by the (historical or modern) Islamic world. See also Crippling Castration, Fingore, Nasal Trauma, Eye Scream, and Literal Disarming. For far more permanent sentences that involve cutting people up, see Flayed Alive, Gutted Like a Fish, and Off with His Head!

This trope is meant to be for amputation as an official punishment for a crime. For cases where someone loses a limb in another context (combat, vigilante justice, Laser-Guided Karma, etc.) please put it under An Arm and a Leg or one of its other subtropes.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: As punishment for his insubordination, for taking his Fracciones on an unauthorized mission to the World of the Living that saw them all killed, and for being a nonchalant, unrepentant prick about the whole thing after Aizen declares that he will forgive him, Tousen severs Grimmjow's left arm, which makes the latter lose enough power that he's demoted from the Espada. Tousen even goes out of his way to incinerate said arm then and there so that it can't simply be reattached like Yammy's was. Gin later implies that Aizen forgave Grimmjow precisely because he expected Tousen to react by punishing him. After Ulquiorra coerces Orihime into becoming Aizen's willing prisoner, he has her demonstrate her Reality Warper powers by healing Grimmjow's arm from nothing, which he promptly uses to kill his replacement as his power and rank are restored.
• Delicious in Dungeon: Discussed — there's an in-universe urban legend that the Half-foot race was named over how many of them had had a foot cut off as a punishment for theft. However, it's not true and there's no other mention of such sentences being imposed.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Even before becoming a demon, Hantengu was a Serial Killer who always tried to dodge the blame for his actions and play the victim card, even going so far as to say his hands moved on their own. When he's brought before a magistrate and tried for his crimes, the magistrate threatens to have Hantengu's "sinful hands" cut off before he is executed.
• Princess Tutu: The Book Men are a mysterious order charged with protecting Gold Crown Town from the Storyspinning powers of Drosselmeyer. They reveal they cut off Drosselmeyer's hands long ago to stop him from writing once his abilities started scaring the townsfolk (which, considering Drosselmeyer's love of tragedies, was likely warranted). Drosselmeyer died from the blood loss, but his story continued even in death, so that the Book Men try to cut off Fakir's hands when he starts using the same abilities, afraid that even with good intentions Fakir's efforts will only add to Drosselmeyer's power.

Comic Books

• Alejandro Jodorowsky's comic on the life of Pope Julius II has the pope castigate a relative of his, a professional cardsharp, for embarrassing him by having the man's fingertips hacked off, leaving him the use of his hands (mostly) but unable to cheat.
• The Children's Crusade (Vertigo): Wat had one of his hands chopped off for stealing back when he was still a child slave.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: On pre-war Cybertron, Cybertronians convicted of serious crimes could be sentenced to empurata: the removal of the hands and head of the offender and replacement with cruder, clawed and faceless substitutes. (Empurata is an anagram of amputare, the Latin root word of "amputate".) Already a controversial practice, the corrupt Senate had a habit of inflicting it on dissenters out of simple spite.

Fan Works

• Subverted in With This Ring when an angel tracks Paul down for stealing a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Paul asks if the penalty is having a hand cut off, to which the angel replies that God has no interest in seeing Paul maim himself, and merely wants Paul to seek forgiveness and amend his ways. He's rather baffled to learn that Paul would prefer losing a hand.

Films — Animation

• Aladdin:
  • The original lyrics to the song "Arabian Nights" included a line describing Arabia as a place "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face." After protests from Arab-American advocacy groups, the line was re-recorded ahead of the theatrical release as "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense."
  • While chasing Aladdin through the streets, Razoul the guard bellows that he'll take Aladdin's hands as a trophy.
  • When Princess Jasmine disguises herself as a peasant and wanders through the streets, she takes an apple from a stall and gives it to some kids. The irate vendor, brushing off her claims that she's the Princess, threatens to enforce the penalty against stealing himself and grabs a sword. Jasmine is only saved by Aladdin stepping in and claiming she's his insane sister.
• At one point in The Thief and the Cobbler, the thief is caught trying to steal something and is taken by the guards to have his hands cut off. Luckily for the thief, he just so happened to have stolen a pair of backscratchers that look like hands that he tricks the guards into cutting off instead.

Films — Live-Action

• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The beginning of the film takes place in Jerusalem, which is under Arab control (and Sharia law) at the time. It shows a man who is about to have a hand cut off for stealing bread.
• The Scorpion King: A street urchin helps give Mathayus directions and is paid with a ruby. Later, the boy is caught by palace guards who think he stole the ruby. They attempt to cut his arm off, forcing Mathayus to save him.
• Snowpiercer: In an example of an obviously well-rehearsed punishment, Andrew's arm is frozen and then smashed off after he throws a shoe at Wilford's assistant.
• The Thief of Bagdad (1940): After realizing that he's in the presence of King Ahmad, the thief Abu thinks he has this punishment coming and begs, "leave me at least one arm for small stealing".
• In The Vikings, after Eric (Tony Curtis) brings Viking chief Ragnar (his own father, unbeknownst to him) to King Aella, he grants Ragnar his Last Request by giving him his sword just before Ragnar jumps in Aella's wolf pit so he'll die sword in hand. Aella takes great offense at the gesture and punishes Eric by cutting off the hand he used to give the sword to Ragnar (the left one).

Literature

• Alien Chronicles: Viis patrollers are fully authorized to use wrist cutters to remove the hands of criminals. Elrabin narrowly escapes such a fate.
• Citizen of the Galaxy: On the planet Jubbulpore, the first time someone commits a theft, the legal penalty is the amputation of one of the thief's hands.
• Crescent City: One of the ways an angel is punished is by having their wings cut off. They do grow back, but the process is excruciating and takes weeks.
• The Crimson Shadow: Duke Morkney sentences a man to lose a hand (plus all of his property) for stealing.
• In the Gor series, slaves who break the law by running away from their owners can be punished by cutting off their feet.
• The Hunger Games: Avoxes are those punished for crimes against the Capitol by having their tongues cut out, spending their lives thereafter as enslaved domestic servants. "Crimes" here included trying to escape Panem and stepping in to try to stop a Capitol beating. Lavinia and Pollux are introduced as Avoxes, while Darius, a charismatic Peacekeeper in District 12, was turned into one in Catching Fire, to Katniss' horror.
• Looming Gaia: In "Pig Bait" it's revealed that Alaine, Glenvar, and Lukas secretly deliver vigilante justice this way behind Evan's back. Alaine is tied to a tree next to a path in the woods wearing jewelry and skimpy clothing, and if anyone tries to steal the jewelry, Lukas and Glenvar jump them and cut off their fingers, and if anyone tries to rape her, they mutilate their genitals.
• Magehunter, being an installment of the Fighting Fantasy series with an "Arabian Nights" Days setting, has a bad ending where you're arrested for making a ruckus and sentenced to amputation. Your adventure then ends on the spot, since you're unable to use your anti-magic amulets or reload your trusty flintlock pistol with just one arm.
• Perdido Street Station: Yagharek's community of Bird People cut off his wings and exiled him for a grave crime. He seeks out a human scientist in hopes of restoring his flight, inadvertently setting the plot in motion.
• The Queen's Thief: This is the penalty applied to Eugenides by the Queen of Attolia. It's noted by other characters that while amputation of the hand is technically still on the books as a legal punishment for thieves, it's considered incredibly barbaric and backwards, and the nation of Attolia hasn't practiced it in decades, at least. The queen simply hated living in fear of Eugenides deciding to break his rule against assassination so much that she decided it was worth it anyway.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Kimberly Magic Academy has a long-established rule that the teachers aren't allowed to go into the labyrinth to look for missing students until after eight days have gone by: part of the Training from Hell-style curriculum is that the students are expected to look out for each other, but after eight days it's generally assumed that they'll be trying to recover the body. New professor Rod Farquois breaks this rule in volume 12, and Headmistress Esmeralda cuts off one of his arms as punishment.
• Roots: After being caught attempting to escape from slavery for a fourth time, Kunta Kinte is given a Sadistic Choice by his master: have his foot chopped off, or be castrated. He chooses the foot (as being castrated would mean he'd be unable to father children) and loses half of his right foot. He never runs away again.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Ser Ilyn Payne, the royal executioner, is mute because Mad King Aerys had his tongue cut out for making a critical comment about him.
  • Davos Seaworth is a former smuggler who saved the life of Lord Stannis during a siege. A firm believer in both rewarding virtue and punishing crime with no exceptions, he grants Davos a knighthood and a keep, and severs the fingers on his left hand as punishment for smuggling.
  • The most common punishment in the Seven Kingdoms for material crimes, like theft, fraud, or poaching, is having fingers or a hand cut off depending on the severity of the crime. Sometimes, seven fingers would be severed if it was a crime against the Faith of the Seven or if the lord meting out justice is particularly pious.
  • In Fire & Blood, one of the late Queen Jahaera's maids is investigated for involvement with her suicide; she's found innocent, but it was found that she stole one of the Queen's necklaces, for which her hand was severed.
  • There are numerous examples throughout the lore of men being punished with castration for sexual offenses, such as adultery, rape, or breaking an oath of celibacy.
  • The Night's Watch is known to cut off the ears of Wildlings who have been caught crossing south of the Wall; anyone caught already missing an ear is assumed to be a repeat offender and executed instead.
  • The practice of displaying the severed hands of thieves is common in Volantis, something Tyrion notices when he visits the city.
• In Witches Abroad, Granny Weatherwax notes that she's heard about foreign places where they cut off thieves' hands so they can't steal again. She learns that this isn't the case when she visits Genua, where they cut off their heads so they won't think of stealing again.

Live-Action TV

• Game of Thrones: King Joffrey has a bard arrested for performing a satirical song mocking his parents Robert and Cersei. He forces the bard to choose between keeping his fingers or his tongue; he responds "every man needs hands," which Joffrey interprets as a sign he wants his tongue cut out.
• The Handmaid's Tale has amputation as a common legal punishment in Gilead. Janine loses an eye for talking back to the Aunts, Commander Warren Putnam loses his hand for having sex with his handmaid Justine behind his wife's back, and Serena loses her finger for reading.
• House of the Dragon: In the series premiere "Heirs of the Dragon", Prince Daemon leads the City Watch on a raid through the slums of King's Landing to punish criminals by cutting off body parts associated with their crimes. A rapist is castrated and a thief loses a hand, among others. By the end of the scene, there's an entire cart full of amputated body parts. Several members of the King's Small Council are appalled by Daemon's brutality, but he insists that his actions were necessary to keep the city safe.
• Lexx: In the Cluster, many crimes are punished by organ harvesting the organs then fed to the Lexx. While it's usually fatal, Stanley Tweedle is told that the penalty for showing disrespect to a noble is usually "just" two or three organs, the guard he asks suggests an eye, kidney, and testicle.

Podcasts

• In the podcast Adventures In New America, from Night Vale Presents, the "amputation laws" are alluded to several times. In the finale it's finally clarified that they made the removal of limbs a criminal penalty.

Religion & Mythology

• The Bible: In the Book of Exodus, one of the tenets of the Law of Moses is that if someone maimed someone else, including limb loss, then the punishment was to have that same injury be inflicted upon them.
  But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

  — Exodus 21:23-25
• In some versions of the myth of the Original Sin, the Serpent used to have limbs.
• The Qur'an: Surah 5, verse 38 specifies that the punishment for theft is to have the thief's hand cut off.

Tabletop Games

• In Ironclaw's first edition, the description of the "declawed" flaw stated that in Calabria, criminals who had claws often have them removed as part of their punishment, and that being declawed carries the additional stigma of being a convicted criminal as a result. The protagonist of the novella Scars wears gloves all the time for this reason. It's later revealed that she was a royal bastard whose father had her declawed after she accidentally scratched her half-brother.

Theatre

• Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier: Played with. Sharia law is implied to be in effect in the Magic Kingdom. There's a situation where a Street Urchin steels from a merchant. The merchant is about to cut off his hand, but Ja'far intervenes and neutralizes the situation.
  Ja'far: [to the merchant] Why take this boy's hand when you could just as easily put it to work? [to the thief] And you, boy, don't you see that if everyone were to steal from Omar's cart, that he would be the one who was starving?

Video Games

• Elsinore: In the route where Lady Brit is arrested for spying for Fortinbras, she is sentenced to execution. Queen Gertrude intervenes on her behalf and has her sentence reduced to exile. However, because King Claudius did not approve Brit’s pardon, one of her hands is cut off as “proof” of her death.
• Warframe: As a child, Parvos Granum was born to a long line of grain farmers. Departing for the nearby Orokin city, he attempted to steal several Rubedo jewels as recompense for how the Orokin profited off of working families like his own, but he was caught and had his left hand chopped off by a plasma dagger. However, he managed to swallow one of the gems, crawled back home, and then threw it up, having a powerful investment he'd use to spread his philosophy of active acquisition. He'd later graft a golden prosthetic over his missing hand.

Web Animation

• If Disney Cartoons Were Historically Accurate depicts a town square whose centerpiece is a statue of Jesus Christ, adorned with the severed hands of thieves and a placard that reads "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL AGAIN." The princess affectionately refers to the statue as "Hand Jesus," and a Funny Background Event shows a city guard cutting off Aladdin's hands and hanging them on the statue.

Webcomics

• Unsounded: Criminal spellwrights usually lose their tongues alongside other penalties, rendering them unable to use magic.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: In "Stan of Arabia-Part 2", After Francine gets arrested for dancing and singing in her underwear in public about how horrible Saudi Arabia is, she implores Stan to go to the American embassy to help them out. Stan, who at this point embraced the Saudi lifestyle (for it's social conservatism, particularly the misogyny) responds that it's best to just let her case go through the Saudi legal system, another prisoner then tells Stan that thanks to the Saudi legal system he's been locked up in that dungeon for over twenty years simply for stealing a chocolate bar. When Stan doubts the prisoner's story, he raises his hook hand and says: "I swear to Allah." Stan decides that Francine is right and heads to the American embassy.

Real Life

• The Code of Hammurabi specified cutting off appendages as punishment for numerous crimes:
  • Hands would be cut off for theft, striking one's father, surgical malpractice, and shaving a fugitive slave to remove their slave-hairlock.
  • A slave who fraudulently tries to claim freedom or strikes a freedman's child would have their ear cut off.
  • If a wet nurse to a now-deceased baby takes a new client without the late child's parents' approval, she would have her breast cut off.
• Amputation was relatively uncommon in Ancient Rome, with a few exceptions like cutting off the foot of escaped and recaptured slaves. It became more common under the Byzantine Empire as an alternative to the death penalty for several crimes. The Byzantines also went in for Facial Horror (with a particular fixation on the eye, partly because a blind emperor couldn't lead troops into battle) and Groin Attack (since a eunuch can't sire heirs) for deposed competitors to the throne. This had a lot to do with the assumption that the Divine Right of Kings called for a physically perfect heir; Crippling the Competition and having them Locked Away in a Monastery where they could repent was seen as more merciful than just killing them.
• The Byzantines influenced other medieval European nations to use rhinotomy (severing noses) as a punishment, usually for adulterous women. In Byzantium itself, Emperor Justinian II ("the Slit-Nosed") reclaimed the throne after such a deposition and took to wearing a golden prosthesis.
• One of the charges levelled against Christopher Columbus and his successors' rule over Hispaniola was that Taino natives whose gold deliveries to the colonial administration were lacking would have a hand severed.
• Thomas Jefferson once proposed a law in the Virginia Assembly to replace many capital crimes with amputation. It was seen as simultaneously barbaric and light-handed, and ultimately failed to pass.
• In the Congo Free State, a quasi-private fiefdom run by Belgian King Leopold II, the amputation of hands, feet, or noses was a common punishment for natives who failed to meet rubber harvesting quotas.

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