Kin punishment

Kin punishment is the practice of punishing the family members of someone accused of a crime, either in place of or in addition to the perpetrator. It refers to the principle of a family sharing responsibility for a crime committed by one of its members, and is a form of collective punishment.

Kin punishment has been used authoritarian states as a form of extortion or harassment. Countries that have practiced kin punishment include pre-Christian European cultures, Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, and non-Western cultures such as China and Japan.

In traditional Germanic law, the law of Germanic peoples (before the widespread adoption of Roman canon law) accepted that the clan of a criminal was liable for offenses committed by one of its members. In Nazi Germany, this concept was revived so that the relatives of persons accused of crimes against the state, including desertion, were held responsible for those crimes.

In November 2013 the Russian Federation legalized punishments against the family of an individual convicted or suspected of committing terrorist acts. These laws were passed under Vladimir Putin in advance of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Under these laws property can be seized even under the mere suspicion that a relative was involved in terrorism.

The Israeli government's use of home demolition within territories occupied in 1967 was condemned as collective punishment on account that the homes of terrorists are often family homes. As a result of internal and international pressure against the practice an appeals process against demolition was established in 1989, and consequently the number of demolitions declined. However, in subsequent periods of violence the house demolition policy has been frequently employed as a deterrent against terrorism. In an effort to stop suicide bombings during the Second Intifada, the Supreme Court of Israel in July 2002 accepted the legality of expelling family members of terrorists from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip if they were found to have abetted the terrorist's activities. They argued that it was not a general deterrent because it limited the use of expulsion to cases where "that person, by his own deeds, constitutes a danger to security of the state." Expulsion to Gaza was discontinued after Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

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