Setting the Scene: Justice Through the Ages
📖 Setting the Scene: Justice Through the Ages
It is 1800. A twelve-year-old boy has been convicted of stealing a handkerchief worth five shillings. The judge sentences him to death by hanging. This is not unusual — under the Bloody Code, over 200 offences carry the death penalty, including theft of goods worth more than one shilling from a shop.
Now fast-forward to today. The same theft would result in a caution or a small fine. The boy would not be tried in an adult court. There would be no hanging. Prison, if it came to it, would focus on rehabilitation.
What changed between 1800 and today — and why? This thematic study traces crime and punishment from medieval England to the present day, asking one central question: why do societies define, detect, and punish crime the way they do?
History glossary
- What was the Bloody Code?
- The body of English law from c.1688 to the 1820s-1830s that made over 220 offences punishable by death, including minor property crimes (e.g. stealing more than 1 shilling from a shop). Designed to deter crime through extreme punishment.
- What was the 'hue and cry'?
- The legal duty of bystanders to shout out and physically pursue a criminal when a crime was witnessed. Failure to join the hue and cry was itself an offence. Reflected the absence of a professional police force — the community was the law enforcement.
Medieval England had no professional police force and no prisons as we know them. Law enforcement depended almost entirely on communities enforcing themselves.
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🧠 Memory Aids
Five Factors of Change — "CAGIT"
Changing attitudes (Enlightenment, humanitarianism)
Action by government (Peel, Murder Act 1965)
Growth of cities (industrial revolution, new institutions needed)
Individuals (Howard, Fry, Peel, Romilly)
Technology (fingerprints, DNA, CCTV)
Key Dates to Know Cold
| Date | What |
|---|---|
| 1215 | Church bans trial by ordeal |
| c.1688-1820 | Bloody Code (220+ capital offences) |
| 1777 | Howard — State of the Prisons |
| 1829 | Peel's Metropolitan Police |
| 1842 | Pentonville Prison (separate system) |
| 1868 | Last public hanging; end of transportation |
| 1965 | Death penalty abolished |
| 1986 | First DNA evidence used |
Purposes of Punishment — "RED"
Retribution — punishment as deserved suffering (medieval, Bloody Code)
Education/Reformation — changing the offender (Victorian prison reform, modern rehabilitation)
Deterrence — frightening others from committing crime (Bloody Code's stated aim, public hangings)
Also: Protection of the public (keeping dangerous people away from society) and Reparation (making good the harm done — modern community service).
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