sentences:  Home demolition was often employed by the state as a means of punishing crimes regarded as exceptionally dishonourable.In a number of medieval European countries, the relatives of those convicted of offences such as incest, sodomy, parricide or treason were sometimes collectively punished by having their homes demolished and their possessions confiscated.Patricide was similarly treated as an offence of exceptional seriousness in Qing Dynasty China; the offender would be executed, his house razed and the earth beneath it dug up.