crime

• primitives › disregarded motive

70:10.3Prim­i­tive man as­signed all phe­nom­ena to a per­son. In case of death the sav­age asked, not what killed him, but who? Ac­ci­den­tal mur­der was not there­fore rec­og­nized, and in the pun­ish­ment of crime the mo­tive of the crim­i­nal was wholly dis­re­garded; judg­ment was ren­dered in ac­cor­dance with the in­jury done.

• primitives › detected c. by ordeals of poison, fire, and pain

70:10.5It was very early be­lieved that ghosts ad­min­is­tered jus­tice through the med­i­cine men and priests; this con­sti­tuted these or­ders the first crime de­tec­tors and of­fi­cers of the law. Their early meth­ods of de­tect­ing crime con­sisted in con­duct­ing or­deals of poi­son, fire, and pain. These sav­age or­deals were noth­ing more than crude tech­niques of ar­bi­tra­tion; they did not nec­es­sar­ily set­tle a dis­pute justly. For ex­am­ple: When poi­son was ad­min­is­tered, if the ac­cused vom­ited, he was in­no­cent.

70:10.6The Old Tes­ta­ment re­cords one of these or­deals, a mar­i­tal guilt test: If a man sus­pected his wife of be­ing un­true to him, he took her to the priest and stated his sus­pi­cions, af­ter which the priest would pre­pare a con­coc­tion con­sist­ing of holy wa­ter and sweep­ings from the tem­ple floor. Af­ter due cer­e­mony, in­clud­ing threat­en­ing curses, the ac­cused wife was made to drink the nasty po­tion. If she was guilty, “the wa­ter that causes the curse shall en­ter into her and be­come bit­ter, and her belly shall swell, and her thighs shall rot, and the woman shall be ac­cursed among her peo­ple.” If, by any chance, any woman could quaff this filthy draught and not show symp­toms of phys­i­cal ill­ness, she was ac­quit­ted of the charges made by her jeal­ous hus­band.

70:10.7These atro­cious meth­ods of crime de­tec­tion were prac­ticed by al­most all the evolv­ing tribes at one time or an­other. Du­el­ing is a mod­ern sur­vival of the trial by or­deal.

• severity of punishment less deterrent to c. than its certainty and swiftness

70:10.15Trea­son—the “sell­ing out” or be­trayal of one’s tribal as­so­ciates—was the first cap­i­tal crime. Cat­tle steal­ing was uni­ver­sally pun­ished by sum­mary death, and even re­cently horse steal­ing has been sim­i­larly pun­ished. But as time passed, it was learned that the sever­ity of the pun­ish­ment was not so valu­able a de­ter­rent to crime as was its cer­tainty and swift­ness.

• primitives › c. was assault upon tribal mores

70:11.4Crime was an as­sault upon the tribal mores, sin was the trans­gres­sion of those taboos which en­joyed ghost sanc­tion, and there was long con­fu­sion due to the fail­ure to seg­re­gate crime and sin.

• dealing with c. in continental nation

72:6.9These gov­ern­ment funds have long been hon­estly ad­min­is­tered. Next to trea­son and mur­der, the heav­i­est penal­ties meted out by the courts are at­tached to be­trayal of pub­lic trust. So­cial and po­lit­i­cal dis­loy­alty are now looked upon as be­ing the most heinous of all crimes.

72:10.1The meth­ods of this peo­ple in deal­ing with crime, in­san­ity, and de­gen­er­acy, while in some ways pleas­ing, will, no doubt, in oth­ers prove shock­ing to most Uran­tians. Or­di­nary crim­i­nals and the de­fec­tives are placed, by sexes, in dif­fer­ent ag­ri­cul­tural colonies and are more than self-sup­port­ing. The more se­ri­ous ha­bit­ual crim­i­nals and the in­cur­ably in­sane are sen­tenced to death in the lethal gas cham­bers by the courts. Nu­mer­ous crimes aside from mur­der, in­clud­ing be­trayal of gov­ern­men­tal trust, also carry the death penalty, and the vis­i­ta­tion of jus­tice is sure and swift.

72:10.2These peo­ple are pass­ing out of the neg­a­tive into the pos­i­tive era of law. Re­cently they have gone so far as to at­tempt the pre­ven­tion of crime by sen­tenc­ing those who are be­lieved to be po­ten­tial mur­der­ers and ma­jor crim­i­nals to life ser­vice in the de­ten­tion colonies. If such con­victs sub­se­quently demon­strate that they have be­come more nor­mal, they may be ei­ther paroled or par­doned. The homi­cide rate on this con­ti­nent is only one per cent of that among the other na­tions.

72:10.3Ef­forts to pre­vent the breed­ing of crim­i­nals and de­fec­tives were be­gun over one hun­dred years ago and have al­ready yielded grat­i­fy­ing re­sults. There are no pris­ons or hos­pi­tals for the in­sane. For one rea­son, there are only about ten per cent as many of these groups as are found on Uran­tia.

• primitives › shamans specialized in detecting c.

90:2.1Spirit con­jur­ing was a very pre­cise and highly com­pli­cated pro­ce­dure, com­pa­ra­ble to pres­ent-day church rit­u­als con­ducted in an an­cient tongue. The hu­man race very early sought for super­hu­man help, for rev­e­la­tion; and men be­lieved that the shaman ac­tu­ally re­ceived such rev­e­la­tions. While the shamans uti­lized the great power of sug­ges­tion in their work, it was al­most in­vari­ably neg­a­tive sug­ges­tion; only in very re­cent times has the tech­nique of pos­i­tive sug­ges­tion been em­ployed. In the early de­vel­op­ment of their pro­fes­sion the shamans be­gan to spe­cial­ize in such vo­ca­tions as rain mak­ing, dis­ease heal­ing, and crime de­tect­ing. To heal dis­eases was not, how­ever, the chief func­tion of a shamanic med­i­cine man; it was, rather, to know and to con­trol the haz­ards of liv­ing.

• primitives › killed someone when nonviolent death occurred

90:3.6To­day, in Africa and else­where may be found prim­i­tive peo­ples who kill some­one ev­ery time a non­vi­o­lent death oc­curs. Their med­i­cine men in­di­cate the guilty par­ties. If a mother dies in child­birth, the child is im­me­di­ately stran­gled—a life for a life.