A Powerful Sympathy: Terror, the Prison, and Humanitarian Reform in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall McGowen

It is felt that men are henceforth to be held together by new ties, and separated by new barriere; for the ancient bonds will now no longer unite, nor the ancient boundaries confine. [J. S. Mill, “The Spirit of the Age” (1831)]I“The punishment of death shocks every mind to which it is vividly presented,” wrote Edward Gibbon Wakefield in 1832. It “overturns the most settled notions of right and wrong.” H. G. Bennet announced in Parliament in 1820 that he thought an execution “weakened the moral taste or sensibility of the people.” Such high-minded but platitudinous phrases frequently recurred in the early nineteenth-century debate over the criminal law, though historians have had a difficult time knowing what to make of them. Yet for all their vagueness such expressions do reveal a sensibility whose outline we can trace and whose influence we can measure. In drawing a connection between feeling and morality Wakefield appealed to social assumptions and values that were popular among humanitarians. Criminal law reformers proposed a new and exacting standard for the administration of justice: “Punishment,” argued James Scarlett, “ought to be consonant to the feelings and sympathies of mankind; and … those feelings ought to be enlisted on the side of the administration of justice.” They argued that the heavy reliance on the death penalty was a mistaken policy. The gallows aroused dangerous passions that signaled the existence of intractable social antagonism. They opposed such a spectacle with reforms that aimed at the promotion of a social union founded on shared feeling.

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Jaffe

With relatively few exceptions, personal petitions from individuals have received much less attention from historians than those from groups in the public political sphere. In one sense, personal petitions adopted many of the same rhetorical strategies as those delivered by a group. However, they also offer unique insights into the quotidian relationship between the people and their rulers. This article examines surviving personal petitions to various administrators at different levels of government in western India during the decades surrounding the East India Company’s conquests. The analysis of these petitions helps to refine our understanding of the place of the new judicial system in the social world of early-nineteenth-century India, especially by illuminating the discourse of justice that petitioners brought to the presentation of their cases to their new governors. The conclusion of this article seeks to place the rhetoric of personal petitioning within the larger context of mass political petitioning in India during the early nineteenth century.


1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 345-362
Author(s):  
James B. Webster ◽  
Onaiwu W. Ogbomo

The Esan who presently inhabit four local government areas of Edo State, Nigeria, share an exclusive feeling of being one people. In language and custom they are akin to the Edo people of Benin. The name “Esan” is an Edo word meaning “jump” or “flee,” which explains the manner in which they departed the Benin kingdom. The Esan region is divided roughly into the plateau—about one-third the total area but containing three-fifths of the people—and the lowlands. The plateau chiefdoms, originally seven of them, have been classed as Esan ‘A’ and include Irrua, Ekpoma, Uromi, Ewu, Ubiaja, Udo, and Ugboha. The lowland chief doms, originally eight, are known as Esan ‘B’ and consist of Ewohimi (Orikhimi), Ohordua, Emu, Ebelle, Okalo, Amahor, Ezen, and Okaigun.According to Esan traditions all the ancestors of the people, royal and commoner alike, came from Benin, the first groups being escapees and pioneers, the royal groups coming into the region later, during the reign of Ewuare, ca. 1455-82. Closer interviewing of clans, neither royal nor holding titles, demonstrates that many do not hold to this popular tradition, claiming either to be indigenous or to have migrated from elsewhere. Even in the intelligence report on the Esan, a significant number of clans reported origins other than in Benin. It seems that Esan ‘A’ chiefdoms on the plateau were the earliest established, and paid tribute to Benin through the Onojie (chief) of Irrua, who was therefore roughly the paramount of the Esan province of Benin. As the chiefdoms grew in numbers and spread on to the lowlands, he remained their overlord or governor. However, by the early nineteenth century the Oba of Benin installed the chief of Ewohimi as paramount over the lowland or Esan ‘B’ chiefdoms. By the advent of the British in the 1890s the earliest fifteen chiefdoms had grown to thirty.


2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 757-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP HANDLER

ABSTRACTThis article examines the criminal law reform career of James Mackintosh (1765–1832). As Recorder of Bombay (1804–11), writer and Whig MP (1813–32), Mackintosh engaged with diverse aspects of criminal law. His view of the organic relationship between law, society, and public opinion, which was shaped by his Scottish intellectual background and Foxite Whig politics, was distinct from the radical and liberal political perspectives most often associated with criminal law reform. The article traces the implications of Mackintosh's approach for the practice of politics and legislation in the period and suggests cause to revise assessments of its outcomes.


1985 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 29-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini

When in the summer of 1902 Helen Bosanquet published a book called The Strength of the People she sent a copy to Alfred Marshall. On the face of it, this might seem a rather unpromising thing to have done. Mrs Bosanquet, an active exponent of the Charity Organisation Society's ‘casework’ approach to social problems, had frequently expressed her dissatisfaction with what she regarded as the misleading abstractions of orthodox economics, and in her book she had even ventured a direct criticism of a point in Marshall's Principles. Marshall, then Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge and at the peak of his reputation as the most authoritative exponent of neo-classical economics in Britain, was, to say the least, sensitive to criticism, and he had, moreover, publicly taken issue with the C.O.S. on several previous occasions. But perhaps Mrs Bosanquet knew what she was about after all. In her book she had taken her text from the early nineteenth-century Evangelical Thomas Chalmers on the way in which character determines circumstances rather than vice versa, and, as the historian of the C.O.S. justly remarks, her book ‘is a long sermon on the importance of character in making one family rich and another poor’. Although Marshall can hardly have welcomed the general strictures on economics, he was able to reassure Mrs Bosanquet that ‘in the main’ he agreed with her: ‘I have always held’, he wrote to her, ‘that poverty and pain, disease and death are evils of greatly less importance than they appear, except in so far as they lead to weakness of life and character’.


Author(s):  
Malcolm Crook

When French revolutionaries abolished privilege, they undermined the traditional basis for representing society. Elections acquired a central role in the new political order, because they could be seen as expressing its fundamental legitimating principle: the sovereignty of the people. But what forms could elections appropriately take in a post-privilege society? The French experimented with answers to this question through the revolutionary and Napoleonic years, across the Restoration and liberal eras, into the Second Republic and beyond. Changes from time to time in who was allowed to vote provided only one element in a complex picture. Following a traditional model, revolutionary elections to national bodies were usually indirect, though in the early nineteenth century direct election came to be preferred. The physical and social context of the voting process provided another focus for experimentation.


1986 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marika Vicziany

Buchanan arrived in India in 1794 and left in 1815. He was employed by the East India Company for these twenty years in a number of capacities but he is chiefly remembered today for two surveys he conducted: the first of Mysore in 1800 and the second of Bengal in 1807–14. These surveys have long been used by historians, anthropologists and Indian politicians to depict the nature of Indian society in the early years of British rule. Recently economic historians, Bagchi in particular, have used the ‘statistical’ tables compiled by Buchanan as a data base against which later statistical evidence about the Indian economy is measured. Bagchi believes that by doing this he can furnish firm proof of the extent to which British rule was detrimental to the people of India in the nineteenth century.


to-ra ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Nikson Gans Lalu

Death penalty is regulated in positive law of Indonesia, both governed in Civil Code and outside Code of Criminal Law, such in the Terrorism Law, Narcotics Law, and Corruption Crime Act Eradication Law. This indicates that death penalty is viewed as relevant in line with the crime dynamics growing in the community. Debates regarding death penalty among the pros and cons still take place in Indonesia so it raises a question among the people, how the existence of death penalty is seen of the viewpoints of Pancasila and Human Rights? Indeed, Pancasila contains balance value between one principle to another. If the Pancasila is seen partialy, then the answer arises on the question is the death penalty is contradictory to the Pancasila and Human Rights, however some answer also indicate it is not contracdictory to the Pancasila and Human Rights. National Draft Code of Criminal Law consistently retains the death penalty. However, in it‟s formulation policy remains considering the individual protection, namely enactment on provisions regarding “the suspension of death penalty execution” or “conditional death penalty, “if in the probation period (10 years) the convicted criminal does not show a good conduct, then the death penalty may be changed to life time imprisonment or 20 years imprisonment. The basic idea of maintaining the death penalty is to avoid people‟s demand/reaction which is revenge in nature or “extralegal execution” in nature.   Kata Kunci: Pidana mati


2016 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tommy Leonard ,

Abstract Since Indonesia’s Law Number 1 of 1946 concerning Criminal Law (hereinafter referred to as the Criminal Code) applied, criminal law reformed to continue till now, both the modernity of the criminal law material, formally criminal law, and criminal law enforcement. The third part of the criminal law is part of the criminal law integratted to criminal law reform which must be involved to all three parts so they can be implemented. To achieve the objective of sentencing, Bill Criminal Code of 2012 also formulated a modernity of criminal code. types consist of three types. First, the principal of the criminal consisting of imprisonment, criminal surveillance,criminal fines,and criminal social work. Second the criminal subject of a special nature, namely the death penalty. Third, the additional penalty which consists of the removal of certain rights, deprivation of certain goods and / or bill, the judge’s verdict, payment of compensation,and the fulfillment of obligations of local customs or obligations under the laws of living in society. A appropriate theory and the theory improvement prevention of criminal penalties is an approach based on instrumental perspective. The punishment had been seen as an instrument to achieve certain objectives that lies beyond the punishment itself, namely the improvement of the perpetrator or the people protection. The nature and modalities of punishment must be tailored to the objectives which would be achieved. Thus, the imposition of punishment has no meaning in itself, but deriving their value from something else, namely from those objectives. The implication is that if the penalty is only seen as a means, basically can be replaced by other means which may be more efficient Keywords: criminal code, concept, Pancasila Abstrak Sejak Undang-Undang nomor 1 tahun 1946 tentang Peraturan Hukum Pidana (selanjutnya disebut KUHP) berlaku, pembaharuan hukum pidana terus berlangsung hingga saat ini, baik pembaharuan terhadap hukum pidana material, hukum pidana formal, maupun hukum pelaksanaan pidana. Ketiga bagian hukum pidana tersebut merupakan bagian dari hukum pidana yang terintegral sehingga pembaharuan hukum pidana harus melibatkan ketiga bagian tersebut agar dapat dilaksanakan. Untuk mencapai tujuan pemidanaan, RUU KUHP Tahun 2012 juga merumuskan pembaharuan jenis pidana. Pembaharuan tersebut terdiri atas tiga jenis. Pertama, pidana pokok yang terdiri atas pidana penjara, pidana tutupan, pidana pengawasan, pidana denda, dan pidana kerja sosial. Kedua, pidana pokok yang bersifat khusus, yaitu pidana mati. Ketiga, pidana tambahan yang terdiri atas pencabutan hak tertentu, perampasan barang tertentu dan/atau tagihan, pengumuman putusan hakim, pembayaran ganti kerugian, dan pemenuhan kewajiban adat setempat atau kewajiban menurut hukum yang hidup dalam masyarakat. Pendekatan teori perbaikan dan teori prevensi tentang hukuman pidana adalah pendekatan berdasarkan perspektif instrumentalistik. Hukuman dipandang sebagai instrumen untuk mencapai tujuan tertentu yang terletak di luar hukuman itu sendiri, yakni perbaikan pelaku atau perlindungan masyarakat. Sifat dan modalitas dari hukuman harus disesuaikan pada tujuan yang mau dicapai. Jadi, Penjatuhan hukuman tidak memiliki makna dalam dirinya sendiri, tetapi memperoleh nilainya dari sesuatu yang lain, yakni dari tujuan itu. Implikasinya adalah jika hukuman hanya dipandang sebagai sarana, pada dasarnya dapat diganti dengan sarana-sarana lain yang mungkin lebih efisien. Teori hukuman instrumentalistik mengimplikasikan penghapusan hukuman. Keyword: Hukum Pidana, Konsep, Pancasila


Author(s):  
Lindsay Farmer

One of the most important and distinctive themes of Lacey’s recent work has been the analysis of penal practices from the perspective of political economy. However, it is arguably the case that ‘political economy’ is primarily viewed as a dimension of the context in which the criminal law develops rather than as a method of legal analysis. In this chapter I explore the meaning and critical potential of the concept of political economy—how it is used by Lacey, the different traditions that she draws on—and what the perspective and theory of political economy contributes to our understanding of criminal law. I seek to deepen the relevance of political economy to the analysis of criminal responsibility by exploring how the development of the modern conception of English criminal law in the early nineteenth century was itself shaped by contemporary understandings of political economy. Most historical work on the development of the modern criminal law has focused on the impact of utilitarianism to show how changes in penal laws and institutions were linked to new efforts to shape individual conduct in society. However, equally important to the intellectual and political culture of the early nineteenth century were understandings of the new ‘science’ of political economy. This chapter explores the ways in which theories of political economy shaped the modern criminal law in this period and thereby to open up new possibilities for exploring connections between criminal law, criminal responsibility, and political economy—and thus for critical criminal law theory.


1989 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Howell

Things were not right in the Kantō region during the early nineteenth century. In his memoirs, Mastsudaira Sadanobu, architect of the Kansei Reforms, lamented the sorry state of the villages in Edo's hinterland:Much land throughout the Kantō is going to waste for want of cultivators. All the people of some villages have left for Edo, leaving only the headman behind. … Many Kantō villagers are suffering great hardship. Babies are killed, the population has declined, and land has gone to waste.


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