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Hanging: Deterrent or Entertainment?

NCJ Number
169384
Journal
Criminologist Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Dated: (Autumn 1997) Pages: 142-144
Author(s)
R Pearsall
Date Published
1997
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article considers public hangings as punishment for criminal acts, deterrent to criminal behavior and public spectacle.
Abstract
In certain periods of history, executions were so common that they excited no particular comment. In the last 200 years it does not appear that murder was very common in Britain, although statistics are unreliable. In the 19th century the decision to punish an offender was arbitrary and frequently depended on the class to which the murdered person belonged. The concept of a deterrent is only meaningful when persons can look dispassionately at the consequences of their actions. Those who regarded murder as of no great moment were probably more conscious of the humiliation attendant upon public hanging than the fear of hellfire which kept many from committing a criminal act. Even as late as the Victorian period, public hangings were a great occasion and people would travel to be there. Spectators were usually fashionable young men with their whores and the scene was crowded with refreshment peddlers, fairground buskers and hawkers selling broadsheets and spurious confessions. However, the hangings were also attended by fashionable women, and overlooking rooms were hired by the wealthy.

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