QUESTION = Why were olde time punishments for relatively minor crimes so severe? Was death for crimes such as stealing not considered to be a tad harsh?

GENERATION = A thing I'm not seeing mentioned is that a few hundred years ago, the life expectancy of a person was not very long, especially when there weren't all the electric lighting and computers that are in widespread use today. They had to rely on other means, like jail to keep them alive. They also couldn't afford to send their kids to college. Children of felons, and children of prostitutes were often left to die in the woods alone, without any resources and often without anyone to help. I remember reading an article about a [forest-dwelling African woman](_URL_0_) who, in the midst of her suffering, found a guide on her way to the nearest magistrate. The magistrate was compassionate, but decided to cut the person off from all family and friends. When she asked if he could talk to her, the magistrate said no, because it was unsafe and unsafe for people to talk to her. So she was left alone to die. This happened in an area where crime was rampant, and when the woman later came back, the magistrate found that she had been put to death for no reason whatsoever. tl;dr People rarely cared enough to write about the crimes they committed in a way that made them immediately recognizable. 

RETRIEVAL #0 = Footpad---was the most common penalty for the majority of crimes but during the 18th century it was scaled down, and new punishments were practised. Theft by footpads was often categorized as a violent felony. The penalty for violent robbery was hanging on the gallows, but judges occasionally condemned those convicted of egregious crimes to hanging in chains near the scene of the offence. Until 1783, when the procession to Tyburn (the place in which hangings took place) was abolished, executions were carried out in public as a deterrent to crime. Different factors determined if the prisoner was condemned to death or given a lesser punishment. Evidence, the nature of the offence, and the offender's conduct contributed to his or her punishment. Penal transportation and imprisonment were instituted as alternative punishments which were often perceived as a condition of pardon and mercy granted by the king. Section::::Literature and culture. One of the most remarkable literary portrayals of the illicit side of society is Defoe's "Colonel Jack" (1722), a novel which has the shades of crime fiction. Following the theme of "Moll Flanders", it shares many crucial elements necessary to understand how crime and justice were perceived at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century. 

RETRIEVAL #1 = History of United States prison systems---punishment continued into the post-war era with some refinement—"i.e.", weighted leather strips and aerated paddles were used instead of whips. The number of strokes was set to the offense and in some placed, like Massachusetts, limited by statute. Sing Sing convicts in the 1880s reportedly jumped from the upper galleries of the prison's cell blocks in an effort to break their legs and escape a paddling. BULLET::::- Solitary Confinement ("The Dungeon")—Reconstruction-era inmates were locked in dark solitary cells, furnished only with a bucket, and fed short rations for disciplinary infractions (usually for a period of up to a week, but sometimes up to six or more). BULLET::::- Straitjackets—Wardens used these as much for discipline as for inmate safety. BULLET::::- Brickbag—Convicts who would not work were forced in some institutions to wear a heavy bag (full of weighted objects). BULLET::::- Water Crib—Used at the Reconstruction-era prison in Kansas, this disciplinary instrument involved the inmate's being placed in a coffin-like box about six-and-a-half feet long, thirty inches wide, and three-feet deep. The inmate would lie face down, his or her hands cuffed behind the back, while keepers slowly filled the 

RETRIEVAL #2 = Curious Punishments of Bygone Days---Curious Punishments of Bygone Days Curious Punishments of Bygone Days is a history book published in 1896. It was written by Alice Morse Earle and printed by Herbert S. Stone & Company. Earle was a historian of Colonial America, and she writes in her introduction: In ransacking old court records, newspapers, diaries and letters for the historic foundation of the books which I have written on colonial history, I have found and noted much of interest that has not been used or referred to in any of those books. An accumulation of notes on old-time laws, punishments and penalties has evoked this volume. As the title suggests, the subject of the chapters is various archaic punishments. Morse seems to make a distinction between stocks for the feet, in the Stocks chapter, and stocks for the head, described in the Pillory article- which itself clashes with the modern day understanding of a pillory as a whipping post. Section::::Table of contents. BULLET::::- Foreword BULLET::::- The Bilboes BULLET::::- The Ducking Stool BULLET::::- The Stocks BULLET::::- The Pillory BULLET::::- Punishments of Authors and Books BULLET::::- The Whipping Post BULLET::::- The Scarlet Letter BULLET:: 

RETRIEVAL #3 = Gallows---gallows, with one noose per condemned criminal. In one case a condemned strangled to death in agony for forty minutes until he finally died from asphyxiation. Section::::Types.:Horse and cart. Hanging people from early gallows sometimes involved fitting the noose around the person's neck while he or she was on a ladder or in a horse-drawn cart underneath. Removing the ladder or driving the cart away left the person dangling by the neck to slowly strangle. A noted example of this type of execution in the USA was the hanging of British spy John André in 1780. Later, a "scaffold" with a trapdoor tended to be used, so victims dropped down and died quickly from a broken neck rather than through strangulation, especially if extra weights were fixed to their ankles. During the era of public execution in London, England, a prominent gallows stood at Tyburn, on what is now Marble Arch. Later executions occurred outside Newgate Prison, where the Old Bailey now stands. Section::::Examples. BULLET::::- Hangman's Elm BULLET::::- Triberg Gallows Section::::See also. BULLET::::- Capital punishment BULLET::::- Dule Tree BULLET::::- Gibbet BULLET::::- Jail tree BULLET::::- Moot hill Section:: 

RETRIEVAL #4 = History of United States prison systems---were perceived to). Conviction rates appear to have risen during the last half of the eighteenth century, rapidly so in the 1770s and afterward and especially in urban areas. Contemporary accounts also suggest widespread transiency among former criminals. Communities began to think about their town as something less than the sum of all its inhabitants during this period, and the notion of a distinct criminal class began to materialize. In the Philadelphia of the 1780s, for example, city authorities worried about the proliferation of taverns on the outskirts of the city, "sites of an alternative, interracial, lower-class culture" that was, in the words of one observer, "the very root of vice." In Boston, a higher urban crime rate led to the creation of a specialized, urban court in 1800. The efficacy of traditional, community-based punishments waned during the eighteenth century. Penal servitude, a mainstay of British and colonial American criminal justice, became nearly extinct during the seventeenth century, at the same time that Northern states, beginning with Vermont in 1777, began to abolish slavery. Fines and bonds for good behavior—one of the most common criminal sentences of the colonial era—were nearly impossible to enforce among the transient poor. As the former American colonists expanded their political loyalty beyond the parochial to their new state governments, promoting a broader sense of the public welfare, banishment (or "warning out") also seemed 

RETRIEVAL #5 = History of criminal justice---shaming was included. Through the method of shaming, the criminal justice system meant more to teach a lesson than simply punish the offender. The “criminal” was almost always male. However, punishment for such crimes as witchcraft, infanticide, and adultery fell heavily on the women. In addition, much of the blame and punishment for crimes was attributed to those in the lowest rank in society. Whipping was the most commonly used form of punishment, especially in the south with slaves. Other frequently used punishments included branding, cutting off ears, and placing people in the pillory. These punishments were sometimes harsher, depending on the crimes committed. In the American colonies, executions were less common than in England. However, when such a method was used, it was most often a public hanging. Usually capital offenses, such as murder or rape, or repeated serious offenses constituted a need for an execution. Imprisonment was uncommon in colonial America since the budding colonies did not have people to spare to keep the community in order. Every person was valuable for their working ability, and losing even one worker to lawkeeping was neither reasonable nor an efficient use of resources. In addition, colonial communities rarely had enough extra money to build a prison and feed prisoners. Since probation was not yet known to the colonists, they used a system of nods to guarantee troublemakers would not cause 

RETRIEVAL #6 = Prison reform---their way into the main prison system, including open prisons and housemasters, renamed "assistant governors" and many Borstal-trained prison officers used their experience in the wider service. But in general the prison system in the twentieth century remained in Victorian buildings which steadily became more and more overcrowded with inevitable results. Section::::History.:United States. In colonial America, punishments were severe. The Massachusetts assembly in 1736 ordered that a thief, on first conviction, be fined or whipped. The second time he was to pay treble damages, sit for an hour upon the gallows platform with a noose around his neck and then be carted to the whipping post for thirty stripes. For the third offense he was to be hanged. But the implementation was haphazard as there was no effective police system and judges wouldn't convict if they believed the punishment was excessive. The local jails mainly held men awaiting trial or punishment and those in debt. In the aftermath of independence most states amended their criminal punishment statutes. Pennsylvania eliminated the death penalty for robbery and burglary in 1786, and in 1794 retained it only for first degree murder. Other states followed and in all cases the answer to what alternative penalties should be imposed was incarceration. Pennsylvania turned its old jail at Walnut Street into a state prison. New York built Newgate state prison in Greenwich Village and other states