The Evolution of Punishment.

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The Evolution of Punishment

“Durkheim (1858-1917) is widely regarded as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology and was a leading light among the Année Sociologique group”  
Durkheim wrote about different varieties of topics but based his main issue on the nature of social order and social solidarity.  Law and crime was seen as a main term to reveal development of the solidarity in society.  The developments of different forms of punishment are discussed in this essay.   Durkheim identified ‘two laws’

1) The Law of Quantitative Change
The intensity of punishment is the greater the more closely societies approximate to a less developed type – and the more the central power assumes an absolute character. 
 

2) The Law of Qualitative Change
Deprivations of liberty, and of liberty alone, varying in time according to the seriousness of the crime, tend to become more and more the normal means of social control.  

Whether one social type is more advanced than another it has only to be seen if it is more complex or more organised.  The societies are found at different levels and in these social conditions one looks at this as a general evolution of societies.  A government is usually based in an extremely complex society and does not posses an absolutist character, as it is not linked with any social type.  

‘In a very large number of ancient societies death pure and simple is not the supreme punishment’.  Several forms of punishment were established and used in the ancient societies to determine the characteristic.  The main command of punishment was distinguished between regular death sentences.  Punishment in ancient societies, the characteristics were divided into ‘seven categories: impalement on a pointed stake, being burned to death, being crushed to death under elephant’s feet, judicial drowning, having boiling oil poured into one’s ears and mouth, being torn apart by dogs in public, being cut in to pieces with razors’.  These forms of punishment as well as others were used over a period of time amongst the Egyptians, Assyrians, Syrians, French, Romans and Asians.  It was then considered by all that a certain deal of punishment being used was set.  It was not possible for all the offences to be listed that were punished in this way.  

        It was shown that the penal law still remained severe for the punishments held.  ‘A more advanced type of society’, was more observed in the severity of punishment.  The forms of punishment held by the characteristics of the modern societies were ‘death by drinking hemlock, by the sword, by strangulation’.  Other sources of punishment were held at hand such as harsher forms of punishment and ways of torture before death sentences.  ‘Torture was used not only as a means of getting information, but also as a means of punishment’.  It was seen that in the middle of the eighteenth century the role of punishment was formed into a judgment of the offences committed in the time.  The punishment would be judged upon the source of the crime.  Durkheim said that the idea of prison as a punishment emerged in one other book then the Ezra first.  ‘It is only in the book of Ezra that imprisonment appears, for the first time, as a punishment properly so-called’.  Imprisonment was imposed as a special way of punishment. Punishment by prison was seen as a highly slandered situation for a source of punishment as the tribunals were empowered in sentences.  Prison was seen to be a way to dictate and prevent those accused of crime or as an appropriate way of making someone do as they are told.  It was from the Church societies that the prison was developed fully.  It was taken into as a temporary detention for doing wrong or as a means of monastery for some criminals.  ‘At first this was thought of as a no more than a means of surveillance, but later on incarceration, or imprisonment properly  so-called, came into existence, being regarded as a genuine punishment’.   It was shown that in the eighteenth century prison was established and recognised fully.  

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        When Durkheim distinguished between the religious criminality and the human criminality he was trying to show that as humans we tend to show more of constant appliqués towards the judgement of ones doing.  ‘We shall not see then as acts of ‘less-divinity’, but simply of ‘less-humanity’’.   The first sentiment of the humanity of crime is the sub consciousness of the impact that religion has towards it.  The same mental state that comes to mind is to encounter the punishment and moderate the punishment. ‘While religious forms of criminality decline, it is inevitable that punishment on the average should become ...

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