The PuritanBoard - View Single Post - Puritan Works on counseling victims of crime

staythecourse · #8 (**permalink**) 04-28-2008, 10:56 PM

When the church and state were combined a government would operate similarly to that of a church in keeping things public rather than private. This is from about.com

Quote:

Correction & Repentance

In this framework, what was being punished is only half the story - how crimes were punished was equally important. When reaffirming social order lies at the heart of criminal justice, punishment necessarily becomes a public affair. Punishment does not exist simply for the convicted offender, but instead also for the public as a whole. Like autocratic fathers, leaders made heavy use of shame and shaming to get across their message both to the criminal and to the others in the community. Both the criminal and the rest of the public were to be taught a lesson about what God wanted and what would happen if they dared to stray from God's path.

It should be noted that the idea of imprisonment is missing from colonial concepts of punishment. Incarceration and the penitentiary are wholly 19th century inventions and it had not occurred to colonial leaders that reforming and punishing a criminal might be achieved by segregating them away from the rest of the populace. On the contrary, the idea would likely have been met with derision, since it failed to incorporate the rest of the community. Private punishment only serves to affect the criminal, whereas very public punishment also serves social needs.

It is certainly no coincidence that many current evangelical leaders also call for a return to the use of shame when punishing people. Since they too wish to create a godly society based upon specific religious precepts, and so it only makes sense that they would wish to use the tactics of their ideological forefathers. But what was it like, and what sort of effect did it have?

The pillory, stocks and whipping were the most common sorts of public shaming and lessons taught to the public. In 1664, a runaway servant was brought to court in Maryland and alleged that he had been abused and not fed properly, but since the lower classes were not well regarded at the time he was whipped 27 times for having lied. Branding and letter wearing were also used with some frequency. In Connecticut in 1773, Alexander Graham was convicted of breaking into shops to steal food and was ordered branded with a capital B on his forehead. Bodily mutilation was also used regularly, with people's ears cut off for stealing or even just lying in court. In a such fashions anyone who did anything which the community did not like could be treated in a humiliating and inhumane fashion.

It wasn't justice, because that was not what people were seeking. It was supposed to be a lesson - but since it clearly did not prevent the same sorts of general petty crimes we have today, it obviously did not entirely serve that purpose. But even if it had, it was not something to be emulated today. These acts brand a person - sometimes literally - as an unrepentant sinner, not the sort of tactic we should be taking today.

I still have not found anything from puritan writers/pastors