Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
I'm Alistair Budge and today is the start of another three -part miniseries, this time on the subject of crime and punishment.
In part one, in this episode, we are going to talk about the history of crime and punishment in Britain.
In part two, we are going to zoom in and learn about the most serious and final of punishments, capital punishment of the death penalty.
And in part three, the final part, we're going to talk about the evolution of and the evolving role of prisons.
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Okay then, let's get started and learn about crime and punishment in Britain.
If you know the story of Victor Hugo's masterpiece, Le Miserable, you will remember the protagonist and hero Jean Valjean.
With seven hungry children at home and no way to feed them, he steals a loaf of bread.
He is caught and sentenced to five years in prison.
After attempting to escape several times, his sentence is extended and extended, and he ends up spending 19 years in prison.
It might sound extreme to us today, a punishment that is totally disproportionate to the severity of the crime.
But Jean was lucky that the bread he stole came from a French bakery, not a British one.
And no, that isn't a comment about the quality of French baguettes compared to British bread.
In 1795, at the time of this fictional theft, a key part of criminal law in Britain was something called the Bloody Code.
As you might be able to guess from the name, this was a series of laws which listed over 200 crimes for which a punishment was the death penalty.
Theft was included if the value of the stolen goods exceeded one shilling, which is around 10 euros in today's money.
So, Jean Valjean's night time trip to the bakery landed him 19 years in prison, but had the theft occurred in Britain, it could well have cost him his life.
Fortunately, the British justice system has moved on since then, but for almost all of British history, criminal activity, or perhaps it would be more accurate just to say, undesirable behaviour, has been dealt with swiftly and harshly, with not a huge amount of attention paid to whether the guilty
person was guilty in the first place.
Now, before we get into the details of British criminal history, it's worth spelling out a few wider questions related to crime and punishment, which are clearly applicable anywhere in the world, they aren't unique to Britain.
For a crime to be committed, that crime needs to be defined.
A society needs to create laws specifying that certain behaviours are allowed and certain behaviours are not allowed.
Crime is a human construction, and it is fluid.
Some things we now consider crimes were not crimes in the past.
Slavery is probably the most obvious example, but there are many examples of societies in which even murder was not considered a crime, in certain situations at least.
And many things used to be crimes in the past, but are not considered crimes anymore.
Adultery, blasphemy, witchcraft, homosexuality, interracial marriage, these are all things that range from perhaps socially frowned on but not a crime, in the case of things like adultery or blasphemy, through to perfectly acceptable and celebrated, in the case of homosexuality and interracial marriage,
in some last point.
Even today, things that are considered crimes in some countries are not in others, and vice versa.
The fact that crime is not black and white, and that definitions change, are themes that will crop up again and again throughout this miniseries.
Now with that out of the way, let's return to crime and punishment specifically in Britain.
Going back to early British history, in the early medieval era, so before the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066, justice was mainly an individual affair.
If a crime was committed against you, let's say that someone stole two of your sheep, or didn't pay you back the money that you lent them, it was your responsibility to resolve the issue.
There was no idea of a central justice system, and there wasn't even really a local one either.
If a crime was committed, it was the victim's responsibility to find out who committed it, and then come to an agreement with them, which normally took the form of some kind of payment, in order to resolve it.
If no resolution could be found, there was an answer for this, but it wasn't particularly just.
For more serious accusations, there would be a trial by ordeal, so the accused would be subjected to something pretty awful, like being thrown into a cold pond, or having to hold a red hot iron.
The idea was that if they were innocent, God would intervene to protect them.
In the case of being thrown into a cold pond, if the person looked like they were about to sink to the top, there was a sign of innocence, and they would be pulled up by a rope.
And, if they floated to the top, this was a sign of their guilt, and they would typically be executed or subjected to some other terrible punishment.
And with the red hot iron, the sign from God was about whether the wound got infected.
If it did get infected, not only would you have an infected wound, but it was seen as a sign of your guilt, and you could most probably be executed.
And if it didn't get infected, lucky you, that was a sign that you were innocent.
In other words, in this early era of British crime and punishment, the detective work, if we can call it that, was passed on to the individual, and justice was determined by the will of God.
Clearly, this wasn't a great system, especially for falsely accused people who were good at swimming or had weak immune systems.
When William the Conqueror arrived, in 1066, he sought to update and modernise this system.
As you may know, one of the key developments the Norman King made was the creation of a central system of law and order, with the King at its centre.
Under William the Conqueror, a crime was no longer just an offence against an individual or a family, it was an offence against the King himself.
This was when we started to see the rise of royal courts and common law, a system where laws were based on previous rulings and applied consistently across the country, in theory at least.
This was a big step forward, and it marked a shift from community -based justice to one where the state, represented by the King, had a central role in defining and enforcing laws.
Another important development during this time was the introduction of trial by jury, of a collection of people deciding the guilt or innocence of an individual, rather than a single magistrate or leaving it up to the will of God.
Now, perhaps you live in a country where the judicial system involves juries.
Perhaps you've even been on a jury yourself.
But this early version of a jury wasn't quite like the one we know today.
It wasn't a group of randomly chosen, impartial citizens weighing up evidence.
Instead, it was typically made up of local people who knew the accused person and were asked to give their opinion on whether the person was guilty or not, often based on their character and what people thought they could have done, rather than coming to a conclusion solely based on the evidence of their
involvement in the crime.
And on that note, to state the obvious, proving undeniably that someone committed a crime was an awful lot harder in the 11th century compared to the 21st century.
If you think of all of the sort of evidence that is used in a courtroom today, from DNA records to telephone records to photos to CCTV footage, even through to the fact that most cities have abundant street lighting so it's easier to see what's going on at night.
None of this existed in the medieval era.
There had to be eyewitnesses to the crime being committed.
And even that was often a case of one person's word against another's.
So, although it was ripe for bias, and would certainly have led to many innocent people being found guilty, because their neighbours didn't like them, or because they were a bit strange, it was a step forward.
And what happened if someone was deemed to be guilty of a crime, you might ask?
Well, the punishments became harsher, especially for crimes that challenged royal authority.
Execution, the death penalty, was used more frequently, and new laws, like forest laws, were introduced to protect royal hunting grounds.
Killing a deer from the King's land could result in brutal punishments, sometimes even death.
Now, these laws weren't just about stopping people from stealing deer.
Rather, they were a signal to everyone of the absolute power of the monarch, and what fate awaits anyone who decides to challenge that power.
And this would be ratcheted up a notch, as we move into the late medieval and Tudor periods.
By the 16th century, England was undergoing huge changes.
The rise of strong monarchs, like Henry VIII, meant that the state's control over crime and punishment grew even tighter.
Henry VIII in particular is known for his use of harsh punishments, especially for crimes like treason and heresy, offences that threatened his power or the religious authority of the Crown.
If you opposed the King, or refused to accept his religious reforms, you could find yourself facing the ultimate punishment – execution.
Beheading, burning at the stake, and hanging, these all became common methods of punishment for those who dared to oppose the monarchy.
These were also times when public punishments were used not just to deal with criminals, but to make examples of them.
Executions were carried out in public squares to send a clear message to the population – disobey the King, and this could be you.
But the state didn't just rely on execution.
Other forms of physical punishments, such as whipping and branding, where the person would be physically marked for life, were also common.
And it wasn't just serious crimes that were punished harshly.
Minor offences, like theft or begging, were also met with brutal consequences.
People could be flogged, have their ears cut off, or be thrown into jail.
But the most infamous period for punishment was yet to come – the Bloody Code, which you heard about at the start.
By the 18th century, the British justice system had become infamous for its severity, and there were more than 200 crimes that were technically punishable by death.
And not just what we would consider today to be serious crimes, like murder or rape.
Under the Bloody Code, you could also be executed for stealing a sheep, cutting down a tree, pickpocketing if the stolen goods were worth more than a shilling, and even for being in the company of gypsies for one month.
Why, you might be thinking?
Justice had been harsh in Britain for hundreds of years, but this seemed particularly extreme.
Just putting one foot wrong could cost a previously upstanding citizen their life.
Well, the idea behind the Bloody Code was that these harsh punishments would act as a deterrent.
They would stop people from committing crimes.
Public executions became even more common, and men, women and children were encouraged to come and watch.
The criminal would be taken through the crowd to the gallows, where their crime would be read out for all to hear.
And these executions were not intended to be quick affairs.
They were meant to be gruesome public spectacles.
The condemned would be hanging there, kicking and struggling.
The idea being that anyone watching would think twice about committing a crime, knowing that this would be the fate that awaited them.
So, did it work? In short, no, it did not.
There is no evidence that crime decreased at all, and some evidence to suggest that it actually increased in certain areas.
As to why, well, there are several theories.
One is that, like Jean Valjean in France, criminal acts were often done out of necessity.
People stole because they had no other option.
Such was the level of poverty in much of the country.
If you are starving, and you have hungry mouths to feed, then you will do whatever is necessary.
Another theory is that the public nature of the executions often turned executed criminals into folk heroes.
So the threat of meeting the same fate really wasn't so much of a threat at all.
And there was also a growing discomfort, not just among the general population, but also with those in the justice system responsible for administering the law, about the severity and cruelty of the punishments.
Ending someone's life for petty theft just felt wrong, and often judges would find a way of avoiding the death penalty, whether that was by finding them not guilty or giving them a more lenient sentence.
In some cases, judges would even sentence a criminal to be hanged, they would be taken to the gallows, and the noose would be placed around their neck.
But then there would be a last -minute reprieve, a pardon, the idea being that this was to signal to the criminal quite how close they had come to death, and it would deter them from doing it again.
And this growing discomfort with the severity of the bloody code wasn't just happening at an individual level.
The Enlightenment was well underway, and moralists and philosophers had started asking questions about the role of the justice system.
How should a society deal with people who break the law?
What was the role of the criminal justice system?
Was it to punish people who had committed a crime?
Or was it to stop crime being committed in the future?
If it was to punish people who had committed crimes, then surely the punishment should be commensurate with the crime committed?
And if it was to stop future crimes being committed, what did this mean in practice?
Was it about stopping other people from committing crimes in the future, and therefore enforcing harsh and more gruesome public punishments, like during the bloody code?
Or was it about ensuring that the convicted criminal wouldn't commit crimes in the future?
And if so, did that mean helping them change their character so that they wouldn't commit future crimes?
Or did that mean executing them?
Or did it mean sending them so far away that they wouldn't be able to commit future crimes?
Enlightenment thinkers started to analyse the problem from every angle, not just from the point of view of how best to reduce crime, but also was the morally and ethically correct way to deal with it.
Change was on the horizon.
And in mainland Europe, substantial progress was being made.
The great Italian Enlightenment philosopher, Cesare Becheria, would publish his seminal work on crimes and punishments in 1764.
In this, he put forward several controversial arguments, for example that the punishment should be proportionate to the crime.
He also suggested that it was not the severity of the punishment, but the certainty of punishments that would effectively deter crime.
This was a radical idea at the time, especially in a system that believed public executions would stop criminals in their tracks.
And this shift in thinking laid some important groundwork for a slow but significant transformation of the British legal system.
Reformers began to speak out against the death penalty for minor crimes, and gradually the number of capital offences started to decline.
By the early 19th century, transportation, sending convicts to penal colonies, had become a more common and popular alternative to execution.
Now, we actually have an entire episode on penal colonies.
It's episode number 108.
But to cut a long story short, if you committed a crime that once might have led to execution, such as theft or forgery, you might now be transported to one of Britain's distant colonies, typically to Australia.
Transportation was seen as an effective way to punish the criminal, by sending them to a completely new place and meaning that they would never see their friends or family again, and also a way of ridding Britain of its criminals, because they were on the other side of the world.
But transportation wasn't a perfect solution.
It was expensive. Soon enough, word got out that life in Australia wasn't actually that bad, and getting criminals to Australia and keeping them under control was a logistical challenge.
And it became a less popular tool in the justice system.
And at a similar time, so we're talking the early 19th century here, the idea of prison as a form of punishment was gaining traction.
Now, you might think we've always had prisons, but they are actually a relatively recent invention.
Early prisons in Britain, for example the ones you might see in castles, these were often little more than holding cells for people awaiting trial or execution.
They're more like what we would call jails today.
But with growing discomfort with both the death penalty and transportation, there was a shift towards using imprisonment as a punishment in its own right.
The idea was that this was a place where a criminal could reflect on their crimes and become morally reformed.
And of course, the length they would be required to stay would be proportional to the gravity of the crime they had committed, because serious crimes required serious reform.
Now, we'll discuss prisons a lot more in part 3 of this mini -series, but the important thing to mention in the context of the history of the British justice system is that prison became more about rehabilitation and reintegration, rather than punishment or removal of undesirable people from society.
The very word for these early prisons, penitentiaries, gives us a clue to their purpose.
It comes from the idea of penitence, that criminals should reflect on their crimes and become morally reformed while incarcerated.
At the same time, the idea of solitary confinement was introduced, where prisoners were kept in isolation so they could reflect on their crimes.
It was believed that solitude and silence would lead to moral reformation.
So, did it? Well, again, not really.
In reality, the conditions in many prisons were still horrific, with overcrowding, disease and maltreatment.
So by the mid -19th century, Britain was still grappling with a fundamental question.
What was the purpose of a criminal sentence?
Was it to rehabilitate criminals and turn them into productive members of society?
Or was it still about punishing those who had broken the law, to make an example of them and deter others?
Moving into the questions, these questions are still being asked.
And although conditions in British prisons are significantly better than in the Victorian era, they are pretty unpleasant places that suffer from severe overcrowding.
The last people to be executed in Britain were Owen Evans and Peter Allen, who were hanged in August of 1964.
Their crime was, I'm sure you'll agree, more serious than stealing a deer or pinching a loaf of bread.
They robbed and murdered a man.
That was more than 60 years ago now, but the role of punishment in the justice system is still being discussed.
After a thousand years of experimenting with crime and punishment, in Britain, like all over the world, we are still a very long way from finding a perfect solution.
Ok then, that is it for today's short history of crime and punishment in Britain.
I hope it's been an interesting one, that you've learned something new, and that it has got you ruminating a little about the role of the criminal justice system in society.
As a quick reminder, this is part one of a three -part series on the broad theme of crime and punishment.
Next up, in part two, we're going to be going deep into the history of the capital punishment of the death penalty.
And in part three, we're going to take a long, hard look at the evolving role of prisons.
Those episodes, parts two and three, are both going to be member -only episodes, so let me just remind you one last time that you can more than double the amount of episodes, plus learn with our interactive transcripts, subtitles and keyboard cabaret by becoming a member of Leonardo English, the place to go for that is leonardoenglish .com You've been listening
to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe and I'll catch you in the next episode.
