9781422279977

The Bible, in 1 Kings 21, records this case of how kings executed and abused the law. WhenKing Ahab desired the field of his neighbor Naboth, Naboth refused to sell it, saying that God disapproved of the sale of ancestral property. Queen Jezebel took matters into her own hands and hired men to accuse Naboth of blasphemy . The punishment was death by stoning. Once Naboth was dead, the king could take what he wanted. Punishment and Incarceration in the Ancient World and Today This biblical account contains several lessons that can be applied to the history of punishment and incarceration. First, it shows that our modern ideas of legal punishment differ markedly from those of the ancient world. In the United States in the 21st century, the government punishes most crimes by incarceration (rather than stoning or some other act of violence). U.S. citizens think, “Break the law, and go to jail.” (Other countries, for example, Canada, are less likely to sentence offenders to jail or prison, preferring probation, community service, and drug rehabilita- tion programs.) In the ancient world, however, long incarcerations seldom took place. There were few jails, and ancient rulers designed the few that existed to hold inmates for short lengths of time until they were executed, tortured, or released. Whereas prison sentences are the most commonmeans of punishment in the United States today, death, torture, humiliation, and banishment were the common forms of justice in the ancient world. Some societies had no jails or prisons. The biblical story also shows that the ancient world had codes, or sets of rules or laws, just as themodernworld does. Like today’s laws, these codeswere complex, and in some cases they called for mandatory sentences—certain punishments for specific crimes. In the case of Naboth, blasphemy required punishment by stoning. Finally, this case shows that in the ancient world, as in the modern one, justice may go awry. Nabothwas killed, yet hewas an innocent victimof a royal conspiracy. Throughout the ages, governments have used incarceration and punishment for a wide variety of purposes. In the ancient world—and in too many cases today— rulers could imprison, torture, or kill their opponents (sometimes simply people they disliked) on a whim. In the 20th century, for example, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union incarcerated and killedmillions of innocent victims in death camps and the Gulag system. Even in democracies such as the United States today, juries and judges sometimes make mistakes, a fact proven by prisoners (including some on death row) who are later acquitted of their crimes. The Roots of Law in Ancient Assyria The Fertile Crescent (today’s Iraq and Iran) gave birth to the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, and these civilizations provide two of the earliest known law codes in history.

10

the prison System