jayeff

Other than the probability that there was a lot of "It's Sunday, we need someone for the stocks this afternoon lads", what was wrong with pillorying people? I suspect there was something quite valuable in criminals having to directly face the individual(s) and the community on which they preyed.

Another consequence of having the punishment of criminals handled more or less anonymously by the state, is that we don't really know whether someone ends up being sodomized in jail for a year after being arrested for shoplifting, or if someone who commits a vicious assault gets away with a couple of years on an over-worked probation officer's list. We make assumptions, based largely on our own prejudices, as to whether or not the relationship between crime and punishment is reasonable.

Then there is the reality of recidivism. We all know as a more or less abstract concept, that the majority of those convicted and later released go on to offend again. That may not be a reason to bring back some of the more "imaginative" practises of the past, but it's a subject which doesn't get enough debate because the way we handle criminals these days makes it too easy to ignore such issues.