For my first blog post I am
going to discuss how our laws we have today come from European laws when they
were created in the medieval time. European Society believed that it was
necessary to acquire laws to punish people who committed crimes not acceptable
in their society (Rousseaux, 1997). Since then, we have inherited their laws,
and turned them into the laws we currently have today. We are living in a
different time period from when these laws were created, so the laws created by
Europeans hundreds of years ago have changed to better adapt to our society.
The ways which people are punished have changed, we now handle our crimes and
punishments differently than they were handled before so they can better suit
our society (Rousseaux, 1997). The one thing that has not changed over the last
hundreds of years are the patterns which a crime takes place, the patterns of
crime and criminals still remain the same (Rousseaux, 1997).
European society had three very distinct forms of punishment.
The first form of punishment involved fines. Fines played an important role “in
the regulation of medieval conflict” (Rousseaux, 1997). In today’s time people
get fines on a regular basis, on my way to school today I witnessed 2 cars
pulled over by the police, most likely getting a fine for not following the
speeding limit. The second form of punishment they used was corporal punishment
which they linked to penalties that “involved the loss of civil rights”
(Rousseaux, 1997). The third form of punishment used was imprisonment, “it’s
origins date back to the 16th century and it’s integration into
state penal systems at the end of the 18th century has been the
object of ground-breaking research” (Rousseaux, 1997). Before imprisonment
became a known punishment, people would be banished instead (Rousseaux, 1997).
We can “link the evolution of corporal punishment and the emergence of
imprisonment... that together form the cement of social order” (Rousseaux,
1997). From this statement, I believe that when the European society put these
laws in place they had a purpose, and in today’s time period we are capable of
seeing what that is. Their purpose was to create a law that people would obey
so that our world had social order. According to Brundage (1987), Europeans
believed that “murder is no more serious than jaywalking and, therefore, that
both offences merit the same punishment”. This shows how serious they were
about the enforcing their new criminal laws.
During the
European society they noticed that there was a “link between crimes against
people and crimes against property” (Rousseaux, 1997). Physical violence and
assault were the most common forms of violence (Rousseaux, 1997). European
society “endeavoured to situate all forms of violence in any give society a
continuum in order to measure violence as a symbolic expression of social
relationships” (Rousseaux, 1997). With violence being related to social
relationships the physical violence and assaults are committed from some sort
of social interaction, not just random acts. . During the Medieval period crime
involved heresy, they questioned everything with religion and used moral
authority (Rousseaux, 1997). Political crimes came “in forms of power in times
of crisis” (Rousseaux, 1997, 35). During the revolutionary waves, there were
many riots against political parties including the prince and lese-majesty (Rousseaux,
1997). It was very gender specific; women were punished for crimes such as
prostitution not violence while the men were punished for the violent crimes.
It was not believed that women would participate in violent crimes, because of
this they were never punished for it however; they did commit violent crimes such
as riots (Rousseaux, 1997).
If you look back to when the laws first began, it wasn’t as
publicized as it is today and crime was not as noticeable. People got away with
it before because the laws were not as defined. However, when they got caught
they received severe consequences. Over the last several hundred years,
criminals are less likely to get away with crimes because our legal system has
developed to protect individuals within our society. The laws that were
established in Europe during the medieval time have been brought to America and
Canada, and are still the base to our legal system. We have had time to realize
what does and does not work to discipline people, and have created an efficient
and fair justice system.
Rousseaux,
Xavier., (1997) Crime, Justice and Society in Medieval and Early Modern
Times: Thirty Years of
Crime and Criminal Justice History. Librairie
Droz, Vol.1 N1. Retrieved From: http://chs.revues.org/index1034.html#article-1034
Brundage,
A., James., (1987). Law, Sex, and
Christian Society in Medieval Europe. The University of Chicago.
-Kahli
I didn't know anything about how the European criminal system worked so its cool to see that most of what they did back then is the same as what we do now which makes sense because I learned in my law class that our laws come from way back in the day. Also how the conflicts and reasons behind the criminal acts are most likely due to social issues is very interesting since that IS how it is in today's society still. I wonder sometimes what we can change to maybe keep the criminal acts down to a minimum but it almost seems impossible.
ReplyDelete- Chelsea L