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Crime and Punishment
hierarchy
- a. 18th: hierarchy of courts to deal with crimes
- i. Except in England, judicial torture remained important means of obtaining evidence before a trial
- 1. Courts used racks, thumbscrews, etc. for confessions
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Crime and Punishment
Punishments
- a. Punishments cruel and spectacular
- i. Public executions were traditional and regarded as necessary for deterring potential offenders in age when police too weak to capture criminals
- 1. Nobles= beheaded; lower class= torutured, broken on whell, or drawn and quartered
- 2. Death penalty for property crimes and violent offenses
- a. 1800: more than 200 crimes were subject to death penalty in England
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Crime and Punishment
Forced Labor
- i. Besides executions, European states resorted to forced labor in mines, forts, and navies
- 1. Criminals in Engladn sent as indentured servants to colonies in New World and after American Revolution, to Australia
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Crime and Punishment
Appalled
- i. Appalled by unjust laws and brutal punishments of times, some philosophes created new approach to justice
- 1. Cesare Beccaria: On Crimes and Punishments= punishments shuld be deterrants, not brutal
- a. Also opposed to use of capital punishment
- b. Failed to stop others from committing crimes
- i. Imprisonment= bigger impression
- ii. Capital punishment harmful due to barbarism
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Crime and Punishment
End of 18th
- i. End of 18th: growing sentiment against executions and torture led to decline in both corporal and capital punishment
- 1. New prison, in which criminals placed in cells and subjected to discipline and regular work to rehabilitate them, replaced public spectacle of barbarous punishments
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