Lex talionis
Law of retaliation; the principle that punishment should correspond in degree and kind to the offense ("an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth").
Secular law
The law of the civil society as distinguished from church law.
Wergild
Man money"; money paid to relatives of a murdered person or to the victim of a crime to compensate them and to prevent a blood feud
benefits of clergy
The right to be tried in an ecclesiastical court, where punishments were less severe than those meted out by civil courts, given the religious focus on penance and salvation.
Galley slave
Forced rowing of large ships or galleys.
House of Correction
Detention facility that combined the major elements of a workhouse, poorhouse, and penal industry by both disciplining inmates and setting them to work.
Transportation
The practice of transplanting offenders from the community to another region or land, often a penal colony.
Hulks
Abandoned ships the English converted to hold convicts during a period of prison crowding between 1776 and 1790.
Corporal punishment
Punishment inflicted on the offender's body with whips or other devices that cause pain
The enlightenment or age of reason
The 1700s in England and France, when concepts of liberalism, rationality, equality, and individualism dominated social and political thinking.
classical criminolohy
A school of criminology that views behavior as stemming from free will, that demands responsibility and accountability of all perpetrators, and that stresses the need for punishments severe enough to deter others.
Utilitarianism
The doctrine that the aim of all action should be the greatest possible balance of pleasure over pain, hence the belief that a punishment inflicted on an offender must achieve enough good to outweigh the pain inflicted
the law of retaliation and underlay the laws of Anglo-Saxon society until the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 in England.
Lex talionis
Crime was a private affair
vengeance was a duty to be carried out by the person or family wronged
developed in England and Europe in the absence of an organized government. Crime among neighbors took the character of war and public peace was endangered.
secular law
In the year 1200, England developed a system
of wergild, or payment of money as compensation for a wrong as a way of reducing the frequency of violent blood feuds.
The church, the dominant social institution of the time
maintained ecclesiastical punishments; benefit of clergy was eventually granted to all literate persons.
Galley slavery was the practice of forcing men to power ships by rowing;
it was not formally abolished in Europe until the mid-1700s.
imprisonment
Until the Middle Ages, jails were used primarily for the detention of people awaiting trial.
bridewells
Houses of Correction, Milan House of Correction, Maison de Force.
transportation
From ancient times, people who have disobeyed the rules of a community have been cast out or banished
English prisoners could choose transportation instead
of gallows or whipping posts;
by 1606 with the settlement of Virginia
the transportation of convicts to North America became economically important for the colonial companies for whom they labored for the remainder of their terms. It also helped to relieve the overcrowded prisons of England.
Transportation was so successful that, in 1717
a statute was passed allowing convicts to be given over to private contractors, who then shipped them to the colonies and sold their services; this made transportation the standard sanction for non-capital offenses.
From 1787 for the next 80 years
160,000 prisoners were transported from Great Britain and Ireland to New South Wales and other parts of Australia
The number of crimes for which the English authorized the death penalty swelled
from 50 in 1688 to 160 in 1765 and reached 225 by 1800
By the middle of the 18th century, economic and social factors (particularly with regard to labor),
altered political relationships, changes in the power of the church, and the organization of secular authority combined with revolution in the American colonies, liberal ideas about the relationship between citizen and government, and a belief in human perfectibility, set the stage for a shift in penal policies.
A. During the 18th century, The Enlightenment or the Age of Reason challenged and replaced traditional assumptions with new ideas
based on rationalism, the importance of the individual, and the limitation of government
Advances in scientific thinking
led to a questioning attitude that emphasized observation, experimentation, and technological development
In the 18th century, people in England and America and on the European continent began to rethink
such matters as the procedures to be used to determine guilt, the limits on a government's power to punish, the nature of criminal behavior, and the best ways to correct offenders.
In the 18th century
They began to reconsider how criminal law should be administered and how to redefine the goals and practices of corrections.
Cesare Beccaria and the Classical School
put forth the idea that the true aim and only justification for punishment is utility: the safety it affords society by preventing crime.
Jeremy Bentham
one of the most provocative thinkers and reformers of English criminal law and best known for his utilitarian theories, often referred to as his hedonic calculus.
According to Bentham,
rational persons behave in ways that achieve the most pleasure while bringing the least pain; they are constantly calculating the pluses and minuses of potential actions.
Bentham developed
plans for a penitentiary based on his utilitarian principles called the Panoptican, or "inspection house.
John Howard and the Birth of the Penitentiary
probably no individual did more for penal reform in England than John Howard�county squire, social activist, and sheriff of Bedfordshire.
Along with Sir William Blackstone and William Eden
Howard drafted the Penitentiary Act of 1779, which called for the creation of houses of hard labor where people convicted of crimes that would otherwise have earned them a sentence of transportation would be imprisoned for up to two years
The earliest known comprehensive statements of prohibited behavior appear in
Sumerian Law of Mesopotamia (3100 B.C.) and the Code of Hammurabi (1750 B.C.)
From the Middle Ages to the American Revolution,
corrections consisted primarily of galley slavery, imprisonment, transportation, corporal punishment, and death.
With the onset of the American Revolution,
transportation from England was temporarily halted and convicts were held in "hulks" (abandoned ships).
After 1787 British prisoners were
transported to New South Wales, Tasmania, and Australia.
The penitentiary developed
in the 1830
Draconian code ..seventh century BC
first to erase distinction between slave and citizens before law.
attempts to reform prison began in the
1500
House of corrections or workhouse was
established in 1553 by bishop nicholas ridley.
first house of corrections was
bridewell palace
The Prison Act of 1865 formally joined the jail and the
house of correction
and formed the prison
Vagrancy Act of 1597,
transportation became prescribed
Transportation Act of 1718
made transportation the standard penalty for noncapital offenses.
From 1718 to 1776 an estimated
an estimated 50,000 British convicts were shipped to the American colonies.
1868
transportation ceased n England
corporal punishment
Punishment
inflicted on the offender's body
with whips or other devices that
cause pain.
hulks
Abandoned ships that the
English converted to hold con-
victs during a period of prison
crowding between 1776 and
1790
age of enlightenment
new ideas based on rationlism, importance of an individual, and the limitation of government
correction reform
the eve of a crucial period of correction reform
three people who contributed to correction reform
cesare beccaria, jeremy bentham and john howard
Casare beccaria
italian scholar.
founder of classical school of criminological thought.
wrote Of crimes and punishment.
classical criminology
classical criminology
the basis of all social action must be utilitarian concept of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
crime must be considered an injury to society. and the only rational measure of crime is the extent of the injury.
the prevention of crime is more important than the punishment of crime.
secret accusations and torture must be abolished.
purpose of punishment is crime deterrence and not revenge.
imprisonment should be more widely employed and better physical quarters should be provided. with criminals classified by age , sex and degree of criminality
Jeremy Bentham
utilitarian theorist who wrote hedonic calculus.
came up with panoptican prisons
utilitarian
he doctrine that
the aim of all action should be
the greatest possible balance of
pleasure over pain, hence the
belief that a punishment inflicted
on an offender must achieve
enough good to outweigh the
pain inflicted.
John Howard
father of penal reform.
elected sheriff in bedfordshire in 1773.
changed the concept of housing for criminals.
English prison reformer whose
book The State of Prisons in
England and Wales contributed
greatly to the passage of the
Penitentiary Act of 1779 by the
House of Commons.