Homeland Security Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Homeland Security - Essay Example All crimes not considered capital were punishable through public torture, mutilation, or embarrassment (McCorkle 321). Flogging was common. Branding with a hot iron was frequently practiced in Britain and sometimes in the British Colonies in North America. The stocks or the pillory were used for lesser crimes (McCorkle 321-2). Numerous crimes or repeat offenses were considered capital crimes, and executions were public events. The death penalty was the final solution offered to compensate for all the other defects of the criminal justice system. The Massachusetts Assembly in 1736 issued a decree that a thief, on the first conviction, be fined or whipped. On the second, the offender would pay triple the fines and be forced to sit on the gallows platform with a noose around his (or her) neck, followed by thirty lashes at the whipping post (Miller 66). For the third offense, the culprit was taken to the gallows and publicly hanged. In his book  The London Hanged  (1992), Peter Linebaugh notes that those hanged for capital offenses in eighteenth century London were overwhelmingly from the working class, and particularly from trades experiencing the onset of craft-destroying manufacturing (Miller 42). The rise of capitalism had resulted in substantial increases in pauperism and petty thievery, which became rampant all through Europe with the decline of the feudal system. In England, steps were taken as early as 1557 to address this problem through the construction of houses of correction or workhouses, the first of which was Bridewell in London. This type of institution quickly spread throughout Britain and the Continent. Unruly apprentices, beggars, â€Å"strumpets,† vagrants, and rogues were sent to the houses of corrections, where they were manacled, flogged, and forced to carry out hard labor (Parker 105). These institutions were widely regarded as