Morals Blogs: Capital Punishment: Let the Punishment fit the Crime

Let the Punishment fit the Crime

The Greentree brothers, from one of whom I am descended, came to Australia in the early 1800's. They were at the time just teenagers. Arrested I their native England for stealing a sheep they had originally been sentenced to hang. On the day of their execution the sentence was, because of their extreme youth, commuted to “transportation for life” to Australia. Here like so many convicts they were initially slaves in the new colony but once freed became model citizens. I suspect that ironically the life chances for a convict sent to the new colonies was often much better than they faced free in England at that time.

The Greentree brothers, as it turned out, were fortunate. However many went to the gallows for crimes which would attract only a short custodial sentence today and many more were flogged mercilessly for petty offences.

It is easy to dismiss the past with comments such as “those were brutal times” and the like. Easy but wrong. Those who made and administered those draconian laws were human beings just like us.

Those in, for instance, England were at that time professing Christians who had every opportunity to study and apply the Bible to their situation. Bible reading their native language was mandatory in church – which most attended – and by all accounts daily Bible reading was common in the home. In fact since many educated people read ancient Greek, and some Hebrew as well they were possibly in a better position than most in our day to study the scriptures in their original languages.

Yet for all that they had laws, and particularly use or abuse of capital punishment which we now condemn and look at with moral disgust.

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So If we enjoy less brutal times it is only because enlightened people have laboured to make it so. Like all the freedoms we enjoy it has been hard won and could easily be lost. If things we now abhor happened in a society which claimed to be Christian and studied the scriptures, what is to stop our society – particularly if all pretence at a Biblical underpinning for morals is swept aside – becoming even worse.

I have already pointed out the merciless persecution in social media of people who transgress the new “political correctness”. It is a very slippery slope from this to the witch hunt and the lynch mob. We humans are, as the old Prayer Book used to remind us “miserable sinners”. Truth, justice and above all mercy are very fragile virtues which need to be zealously protected and nurtured.

I have in these blogs built a case for re-introducing capital punishment. Some crimes are indeed so vile and so great that for the reasons deduced from the Bible a society should  execute the criminal. However the dangers of capital punishment being abused must not be underrated. In this final post on capital punishment the danger I raise is of society killing people whose crime does not warrant this extreme punishment. Be sure the punishment fits the crime and forget not mercy!