Campaigners argue stiffer penalties are needed to deter thieves. And a petition urging government to act has gathered more than , names. But the Labour MP who chairs the Commons Petitions Committee said pet theft was "spiralling" upwards and described the government's response as "incredibly disappointing".
It strikes at the heart of families and the evidence is showing that every year the government fails to take action the problem is getting worse. She said ensuring sentencing options were available to courts would act "as a real deterrent for those who commit pet theft crimes". In reply, Mr Buckland said: "The government fully understands the deep distress caused by the theft of a much-loved family pet and the importance of dealing with pet theft given this impact it can have on owners.
Until most defendants actually executed were hanged at Tyburn where Marble Arch stands today. Execution was a public spectacle, meant to act as a deterrent to crime. Convicts were drawn in a cart through the streets from Newgate, and, after they were given a chance to speak to the crowd and, it was hoped, confess their sins , they were hanged.
Huge crowds were attracted to these events, as reflected in plate 11 of William Hogarth's Industry and Idleness. The convict was placed in a horse drawn cart and blindfolded. Until the introduction of a sharp drop in , this resulted in a long and painful death by strangulation friends of the convicts often helped put them out of their misery by pulling on their legs. Some of the most serious offenders were hanged near the place of their crime, as a lesson to the inhabitants of that area.
Others were punished in even more brutal ways, as explained below. After the execution there were sometimes struggles for possession of the corpse between assistants to the surgeons, who wanted it for teaching anatomy, and friends of the convict, who wanted to give the victim a proper burial. Concern at the disorder which occurred at such scenes contributed to the passage of the Murder Act. In the procession to Tyburn was abolished and for the next eighty-five years hangings were staged outside Newgate Prison.
Although these executions were expedited by the use of the sharp drop, they were still very public occasions.
In , concern about public disorder led to the abolition of public executions altogether, and subsequent hangings were transferred inside the prison. Women found guilty of either treason or petty treason were sentenced to be burned alive at the stake, though executioners usually strangled women with a cord before lighting the fire.
Burning at the stake was abolished in and replaced by drawing and hanging. Men found guilty of treason were sentenced to be drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, hanged, cut down while still alive, and then disembowelled, castrated, beheaded and quartered.
It was alleged that merciful executioners allowed men to die on the gallows before dismembering them. This punishment was rare during our period, but occasionally those convicted of coining and petty treason were sentenced to be drawn on a hurdle only, but not quartered. The last convicts to be sentenced at the Old Bailey to be drawn and quartered were the Cato Street conspirators in , but in the event decapitation was the only part of the grisly ceremony that was actually carried out.
Judges occasionally ordered that the bodies of those convicted of egregious crimes and hanged should be hung in chains near the scene of their offence. This practice was supplemented by an act of , "for better preventing the horrid crime of murder", which dictated that the bodies of those found guilty of murder and hanged should either be delivered to the surgeons to be "dissected and anatomised" or hung in chains.
By increasing the terror and the shame of the death penalty, these practices were meant to increase the deterrent effect of capital punishment. They were abolished in dissection and hanging in chains. Early modern prisons were typically used for holding defendants awaiting trial and convicts awaiting punishment.
Imprisonment was not perceived as a form of punishment in itself, and indeed the relatively open manner in which prisons were run was not conducive to their serving as a form of punishment. Occasionally, however, even in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, convicts were sentenced to a period of imprisonment, usually in addition to some other penalty, such as whipping.
In a statute was passed which allowed judges to sentence defendants given benefit of clergy to up to two years' hard labour in a house of correction. Until that date houses of correction had - in theory at least - been exclusively used only to punish the misdemeanours of the poor and vagrant. This punishment was used until , when as a result of a further Act of Parliament most convicts allowed benefit of clergy were sentenced to transportation instead. From the s new attitudes towards imprisonment developed.
It was believed that if redesigned and reordered, prisons could be used to reform offenders, changing them from recalcitrant criminals to productive citizens in the very process of punishing their crimes. Use of imprisonment was further stimulated by the suspension of transportation following the outbreak of the American Revolution in An Act of , intended to address the problems resulting from the suspension of transportation, allowed judges to sentence male offenders to hard labour improving the navigation of the Thames by dredging it, as an alternative to transportation overseas.
Although the Act did not specify where these men were to be incarcerated old ships anchored on the Thames, known as the hulks, were soon turned to the purpose.
The work took place on shore. The Act also allowed the judges to sentence women, and men who were incapable of working on the river, to a term of hard labour in a house of correction. In Parliament passed the Penitentiary Act , which authorised the building of one or more national penitentiaries characterised by strict discipline and hard labour. In the new Coldbath Fields House of Correction used the controversial system of solitary confinement in an attempt to force convicts to reflect on their sins and to reform themselves.
In conditions for women prisoners in Newgate were reformed. In Millbank Penitentiary opened on the banks of the Thames where the Tate Britain museum stands today. A massive building, it contained separate cells for prisoners. In Pentonville Prison in North London opened. It was built to hold prisoners, intended initially to spend eighteenth months in solitary confinement.
And eight years later, its near neighbour, Holloway Prison was opened. Over the course of the nineteenth century prisons underwent several important changes, including centralisation of administration, the introduction of inspections and widespread use of solitary confinement. Perhaps inevitably, their growing use prompted dissatisfaction with prison conditions and doubts about the impact they had on prisoners.
Alternative punishments were continually being sought. A parliamentary committee in , however, concluded that imprisonment should continue as a central feature of penal policy, and its recommendations were embodied in the Prison Act. By looking at the text of the Proceedings , you can normally determine the length of the sentence and, sometimes, the prison in which the convict was sentenced to be incarcerated.
You will find that sentences often combined imprisonment with other punishments. Judges at the Old Bailey committed prisoners to two institutions more frequently than any others: Newgate Prison and the house of correction.
This menu also allows you to search on imprisonment at hard labour and penal servitude and those imprisoned on the grounds of preventive detention.
Prisoners specifically sentenced to hard labour, whether in the house of correction, the hulks, or in prison, have been categorised together under "hard labour".
In addition it is possible to search separately for those convicts deemed insane at the time that the offence was committed, and young convicts committed to the Penitentiary. Many convicts were sentenced to confinement with hard labour. Hard labour was meant to contribute to the reformation of offenders by teaching them to be industrious, but the punishment was also meant to deter others from committing crime.
Those imprisoned sometimes worked a water pump see image , while men incarcerated in the hulks worked on dredging the Thames or in the naval dockyards. Others were sentenced to work on ballast lighters. See also Penal Servitude. The house of correction or "Bridewell" was a sixteenth-century penal innovation designed both to punish and reform petty criminals via a short period of imprisonment at hard labour. As time progressed these institutions were used for a wider range of crimes and the average length of inmates' imprisonment increased.
Prisoners in houses of correction were typically set to beating hemp. The house of correction or "Bridewell" was a sixteenth-century innovation originally designed to provide work for the idle, training for the young, and punishment and reform for petty criminals by subjecting them to short periods of imprisonment at hard labour.
As time progressed the training and work provisions fell aside, and these institutions came to be used to punish an ever wider range of crimes. The length of the sentences imposed also increased. The "Act for the Safe Custody of Insane Persons Charged with Offences" empowered the courts to detain defendants who, due to a lack of lack reason and understanding, were deemed unable to understand the difference between right and wrong. Imprisonment on the grounds of insanity was therefore enforced not only on those people of "unsound mind" found guilty of their crimes, but also those found not guilty.
Following the dissemination of the "M'Naughton Rules" for dealing with defendants who pleaded insanity in , the number of defendants receiving this sentence increased considerably. Newgate was London's chief prison and functioned both as a holding prison for convicts awaiting trial or execution and as a place of punishment.
Those sentenced to be punished in Newgate tended to be young people serving a short stint of imprisonment in the prison followed by a more prolonged period of imprisonment in a reformatory. Newgate closed in and was demolished in to make way for the new Central Criminal Court building. Penal servitude was a term of imprisonment at hard labour first introduced by the and Penal Servitude Acts as a replacement for transportation. It gave judges the discretion to sentence anyone who might otherwise have been transported for less than 14 years to penal servitude.
This normally meant labour in a convict prison. Under the Prevention of Crimes Act courts were empowered to pass the sentence of preventive detention in order to protect the public from individuals considered to be habitual criminals , i. Convicts who were sentenced to preventive detention were usually punished first with a stint of penal servitude followed by an open-ended period of imprisonment at hard labour "for the protection of the public".
While this was draconian in concept, judges became increasingly reluctant to use the sentence after the first two or three years. Some convicts were sentenced to periods of imprisonment in more unusual institutions, including the Poultry Compter, New Prison, and Holloway Prison. Some youths between the ages of 11 and 21 who had been sentenced to transportation but were deemed not yet old enough to be sent overseas were sent specifically to "the penitentiary".
You can change your cookie settings at any time. If you are found guilty of a crime, your sentence will depend on a number of factors, including the type, seriousness and circumstances of the crime. A mitigating circumstance is something that may reduce your sentence, such as having problems in your personal life that have affected your behaviour. Judges and magistrates use guidelines from the Court of Appeal and the Sentencing Council when deciding what sentences to give.
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