Approaches to Crime and Punishment and Government Attitude's Impact on Punishment.

... Crime and Punishment Approaches to Crime and Punishment and Government Attitude's Impact on Punishment: At the end of the seventeenth century, the most common form of punishment was the death penalty through the Bloody code. This was due to the fact that the majority of lawmakers, rich landowners seeking to protect their assets, were still under the impression that punishments should be as harsh and as public as possible to deter people from wanting to commit crime. According to them, the removal of the worst offenders either by killing or transporting them was only a secondary purpose of punishment. Executions were always carried out in public and each year hundreds of people were hanged. The first reaction of the Government to any new crime which worried them was to add it to the list of crimes punishable by death, or capital crimes, which saw a rapid increase in the late seventeenth century. Punishments such

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