2. Ancient Punishments
Documented in:
The writings of ancient Greek orators,
poets, and philosophers.
Ancient Hebrew history: the Bible.
The Roman Twelve Tables, published in
451 B.C.
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3. Ancient Israel
1. In the Old Testament punishments included
banishment, beating, beheading, blinding, branding and
burning, casting down from a high place, crushing,
confiscation of property, crucifixion, cursing, cutting
asunder, drowning, exile, exposure to wild beasts,
finding, flaying, hanging, imprisonment, mutilation,
plucking of the hair, sawing asunder, scourging with
thorns, slavery, slaying by spear or sword, use of the
stocks, stoning, strangulation, stripes, and suffocation.
2. The purpose of physical punishment was primarily
revenge.
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4. Ancient Greece
1. Due to the efforts of poets, playwrights, and
philosophers, the Greek city-states provide the earliest
evidence that public punishment is part of the Western
tradition.
2. Many early crimes were punished by execution,
banishment, or exile.
3. Other punishments in ancient Athens included
“confiscation of property, fines, and the destruction of
the condemned offenders’ houses,” public denunciation,
shaming, imprisonment, and public display of the
offender.
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5. Early Rome
1. The first written laws of Rome were issued in
451 B.C. and called the Twelve Tables.
2. Conviction of some offenses required
payment of compensation, but the most frequent
penalty was death.
3. Different versions of death were given for
different crimes (e.g., arsonists were burned to
death).
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6. Physical Punishments
Flogging (whipping)
The cat-o’-nine-tails, which had nine knotted
cords fastened to a wooden handle.
The Russian knout, which had leather strips
fitted with fish hooks.
Branding
Criminals were branded with a mark or letter
signifying their crimes.
Mutilation
Lex talionis
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7. Physical Punishments - Continued
Instant Death
Beheading, Hanging, Garroting
Frequently reserved for nobility
Lingering Death
Burning alive, breaking on the wheel
Torture
The rack, cording, and using red hot pincers
to pull flesh away.
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8. Physical Punishments - Continued
Exile and Transportation
A 1597 English law authorized the
transportation of convicts to newly
discovered lands.
Public Humiliation
The stocks and the pillory
Confinement
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9. Physical Punishments -
Continued
The Puritans, for example, sometimes
burned witches and unruly slaves; made
wide use of the stocks, the pillory, and the
ducking stool; branded criminal offenders;
and forced women convicted of adultery to
wear “scarlet letters.”
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10. Exile and Transportation
England passed laws to allow prisoners to be housed
aboard hulks.
When this proved impractical, the convict population started to
be shifted to Australia, New South Wales, Norfolk Island, and
Van Diemen’s Land – n/k/a Tasmania
In 1791 France was transporting prisoners to
Madagascar, New Caledonia, the Marquesas Islands,
and French Guiana.
Devil’s Island functioned as a prison until 1951.
As late as 1990, Russia was the last remaining Western
nation to practice “Transportation”.
Exile in Siberia from the early 17th century.
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11. Incarceration
Pieter Spierenburg
Bondage: “any punishment that puts
severe restrictions on the condemned
person’s freedom of action and
movement, including, but not limited to,
imprisonment.”
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12. The House of Correction
(1550 – 1700)
First workhouse in England was called
Bridewell.
At first prisoners in workhouses were paid
for their work.
Became informal repositories for those the
community regarded as “inconvenient”
(e.g., the mentally ill, irresponsible, or
deviant).
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13. The Emergence of the Prison
Two main elements fueled the
development of prisons as we know
them today:
A philosophical shift away from
punishment of the body, toward
punishment of the soul or human spirit;
and
The passage of laws preventing
imprisonment of anyone but criminals.
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14. The Emergence of the Prison
Prisons, as institutions in which convicted
offenders spend time as punishment for
crimes, are relatively modern.
Prisons resulted from growing
intellectualism in Europe and America (the
Age of Enlightenment), and in reaction to
the barbarism of corporal punishment.
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15. William Penn
(1644-1718)
Founder of Pennsylvania
Was confined in the Tower of London for the
crime of promoting the faith.
While imprisoned he wrote No Cross, No Crown.
Influenced the “Great Act” of 1682, through
which the Pennsylvania Quakers reduced capital
offenses to the single crime of premeditated
murder and abolished all corporal punishments.
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16. John Howard
(1726-1790)
Was taken prisoner by pirates on a trip to
Portugal.
Appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1773.
Began arguing for the abolishment of spiked collars
and chains.
In his 1777 work The State of the Prisons in
England and Wales he described clean and well-
run institutions in which prisoners were kept
busy doing productive work, as opposed to the
abysmal state of actual English prisons.
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17. Cesare Beccaria
(1738–1794)
Formed the Academy of Fists, a circle of
intellectuals, which took as its purpose the
reform of the criminal justice system.
In his 1764 essay On Crimes and Punishment
he outlined a utilitarian approach; rejected
torture as a form of punishment; rejected ex post
facto laws; argued against the use of secret
accusations; advocated swift punishment for its
deterrent value; and supported punishment
proportional to the offense.
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18. Jeremy Bentham
(1748–1832)
Advocated utilitarianism, the principle that
the highest objective of public policy is the
greatest happiness for the largest number of
people.
His idea that people are motivated by
pleasure and pain and that the proper
amount of punishment can deter crime gave
rise to the “hedonistic calculus.”
Inventor of the panopticon.
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19. Bentham’s Hedonistic Calculus
People by nature choose pleasure and avoid
pain.
Each individual calculates the degree of
pleasure or pain to be derived from a given
course of action.
Lawmakers can determine the degree of
punishment necessary to deter criminal
behavior.
Such punishment can be effective and rationally
built into a system of criminal sentencing.
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20. Sir Samuel Romilly
(1757–1818)
Entered Parliament in 1806.
Fought to “get the gentleness of the English
character expressed in its laws” through
reduction of the number of capital crimes under
English law.
His work inspired others to recognize the need
for alternatives to capital punishment as a
means of dealing with the majority of criminal
offenders.
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21. Sir Robert Peel
(1788–1850)
British Parliamentary leader.
Strongly influenced by Sir Samuel Romilly and Jeremy
Bentham
Influenced the development of policing worldwide
through the organizational structure he employed in
establishing the London Metropolitan Police Force.
Identified the fundamental functions of policing as the
investigation of crime and the apprehension of criminals.
Punishment, he said, should not be imposed by the
police, but by specialists in the field of penology.
Gaol Act of 1823 separated male and female prisoners,
and mandated female prisoner supervision by females.
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22. Elizabeth Fry
(1780–1845)
Motivated by strong Quaker faith to “expose the
plight of women in prison” and fight for better
conditions.
Believed women prisoners were more likely than
men to change, and saw appeals “to the heart”
as a promising approach for achieving
rehabilitation.
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23. Mary Belle Harris
(1874–1957)
First warden of the Federal Institution for
Women in Alderson, West Virginia, she
advocated correctional reforms and supported
the reformation ideal.
Harris argued in favor of reformation, not
punishment, as the primary focus of most
correctional institutions/programs.
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24. Sanford Bates
Bates was the first director of the Federal
Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Bates wrote that “the perplexing problem
confronting the prison administrator of today is
how to devise a prison so as to preserve its role
of a punitive agency and still reform the
individuals who have been sent there.”
Bates believed in rehabilitation and in the value
of inmate labor.
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25. George Beto
Former director of Texas Department of
Corrections, he believed in the goal of
rehabilitation.
Beto drew special attention to the importance
of preparing inmates for release back into
society.
Best known for developing the “Texas Control
Model”, strict rule enforcement designed to
foster discipline.
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