History of punishment and crime control

lecture

what was the criminal system back in the 17th century

no CJ: criminal activity is dealt locally

• 50 capital offences

what was the criminal system back in the 18th century

more of a robust system to deal with crime

• rise of bloody code

• 160 capital offences

what was the criminal system back in the 19th century

over 288 capital offences

what was the ‘Bloody code’?

name given to the legal system between the late-17th and early-19th century which made more than 200 offences – many of them petty – punishable by death. rapid increase of Statutes offences - introduced between 1688 and 1815 covered primarily property offences, such as pickpocketing, cutting down trees and shoplifting.

why was there so many capital offences? 1560-1630

• the rise of Catholicism: prosecution of Catholics

• rise of ‘witchcraft’

• population growth and pressure at the social base

why was there so many capital offences? 1780-1850

population growth, industrialisation, urbanisation.

what is the term ‘class based justice’ mean?

• magistrates and judges were drawn from the upper, landed classes.

• law itself was overwhelmingly concerned with property and was made by the social elite.

• many crimes can be interoperated as act of resistance to or survival within, the inequitable economic system:

  • poaching

  • sedition

  • riots

how does the legal system from back then affect us now?

our legal system is still upper class members, this is due they were able to fund themselves through law school get connections.

• there is still overrepresentation of certain groups: men and minorities.

how were public hangings viewed by common people?

• as a public holiday/an event to attend

what were the states reason for public hangings

• if you committed a crime, you were to be punished publicly

• meant to act as a deterrent/prevention - painful

what were the state problems when organising the hangings?

• difficult to organise and it was expensive

• trade had to stop and property values fell

• difficult to control public disorder.

what was the outcome of public hangings?

instead of shame, the criminals received support from others

what did Gatrell said about hangings in England?

“Between 1770 and 1830, well over 7,000 people were publicly hanged in England for small crimes as well as large; most choked painfully to death before crowds of thousands. Right down to the abolition of public execution in 1868, the scaffold loomed grimly over the English imagination.” 

(V.A.C. Gatrell, 1994: i) The Hanging Tree

what were the reasons for a declining of the bloody code?

• more established system

• move to punishment of the mind and soul rather the body

• reluctance to executions

• campaigns

What was the traditionalist view reason for decline in the bloody code?

• day of execution with the long procession had ceased to be a deterrent, instead, the authorities were alarmed to see, they became holiday.

• too many executions ‘dulled the moral senses’ - shame that ought to have attached to the offender, sympathy might intrude.

reform to public execution: the revisionist view

• business owners became increasingly concerned about disruption to trade (Devereaux, 2009)

• property-holders petitioned to have the scaffold moved based on falling property value in the vicinity of tyburn (Gatrell, 1993)

• meanwhile crime rates soared

• execution day rituals and processions ended, and public scaffold moved from tyburn.

1808

Samuel Romilly reforms. Abolished the death penalty for some bloody code offences

1832

Reform act - abolition for most offences

• shoplifting goods worth five shillings or less

• returning from transportation

• letter-stealing

• sacrilege

1843

Gibbeting abolished -where executed corpses were displayed publicly in cages

1861

number of capital crimes reduced to 4: murder, treason, arson in royal dockyards and piracy with violence

1868

abolition of public hanging

1870

hanging, beheading and quartering of traitors ended.

what was transportation

alternative fir capital convicts pardoned from death was transportation over seas to British colonies, and remained a standard form of punishment over 200 years

Transportation act 1718 granted judges authorities

what were the profiters from transportation

merchant shippers pioneered the development of transportation as a form of punishment, seeing the demand for labour in cotton and tobacco plantations in the mid-Atlantic colonies

Companies would profit from limited-term labour, with little to no cost to the state

Feeley (1999)  argues that it is a misreading of history to argue that transportation emerged as an alternative to the gallows.

what were the operation of transportation

•Conditions on the ships were terrible: half the convicts died of typhoid and cholera en route and never made it to their destination.

•Despite some relatively short sentences, there was no procedure for return after the sentence expired.

•If settlement was to be made permanent, families were permitted to join the convict, but in many cases they never saw their families again.

•Often, Governors of regions where convicts were sent were given no instructions of how the convicts were to be employed

Why has the history of transportation remained relatively overlooked?

it acted less than a detrend because how the bloody code was dramatized

many people made a life while transported to America/Australia

why did people from working class backgrounds attended executions?

• entertainment

• support of the criminal and rejection of the elite

• economic oppoertunity