prisoners

• first refinement of war was taking of

70:1.20The first re­fine­ment of war was the tak­ing of pris­on­ers. Next, women were ex­empted from hos­til­i­ties, and then came the rec­og­ni­tion of non­com­bat­ants. Mil­i­tary castes and stand­ing armies soon de­vel­oped to keep pace with the in­creas­ing com­plex­ity of com­bat. Such war­riors were early pro­hib­ited from as­so­ci­at­ing with women, and women long ago ceased to fight, though they have al­ways fed and nursed the sol­diers and urged them on to bat­tle.

• preventive detention but no prisons in continental nation

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.

• Jude

128:6.5They ar­rived at Je­ru­sa­lem in due time and were on their way for a first visit to the tem­ple, the very sight of which had stirred and thrilled Jude to the very depths of his soul, when they chanced to meet Laz­a­rus of Beth­any. While Je­sus talked with Laz­a­rus and sought to ar­range for their joint cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over, Jude started up real trou­ble for them all. Close at hand stood a Ro­man guard who made some im­proper re­marks re­gard­ing a Jew­ish girl who was pass­ing. Jude flushed with fiery in­dig­na­tion and was not slow in ex­press­ing his re­sent­ment of such an im­pro­pri­ety di­rectly to and within hear­ing of the sol­dier. Now the Ro­man le­gion­naires were very sen­si­tive to any­thing bor­der­ing on Jew­ish dis­re­spect; so the guard promptly placed Jude un­der ar­rest. This was too much for the young pa­triot, and be­fore Je­sus could cau­tion him by a warn­ing glance, he had de­liv­ered him­self of a vol­u­ble de­nun­ci­a­tion of pent-up anti-Ro­man feel­ings, all of which only made a bad mat­ter worse. Jude, with Je­sus by his side, was taken at once to the mil­i­tary prison.

• Jesus’ talk with the condemned prisoner

133:4.12To the con­demned crim­i­nal he said at the last hour: “My brother, you have fallen on evil times. You lost your way; you be­came en­tan­gled in the meshes of crime. From talk­ing to you, I well know you did not plan to do the thing which is about to cost you your tem­po­ral life. But you did do this evil, and your fel­lows have ad­judged you guilty; they have de­ter­mined that you shall die. You or I may not deny the state this right of self-de­fense in the man­ner of its own choos­ing. There seems to be no way of hu­manly es­cap­ing the penalty of your wrong­do­ing. Your fel­lows must judge you by what you did, but there is a Judge to whom you may ap­peal for for­give­ness, and who will judge you by your real mo­tives and bet­ter in­ten­tions. You need not fear to meet the judg­ment of God if your re­pen­tance is gen­uine and your faith sin­cere. The fact that your er­ror car­ries with it the death penalty im­posed by man does not prej­u­dice the chance of your soul to ob­tain jus­tice and en­joy mercy be­fore the heav­enly courts.”

135:10.1Since Je­sus had gone north into Gal­i­lee, John felt led to re­trace his steps south­ward. Ac­cord­ingly, on Sun­day morn­ing, March 3, John and the re­main­der of his dis­ci­ples be­gan their jour­ney south. About one quar­ter of John’s im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers had mean­time de­parted for Gal­i­lee in quest of Je­sus. There was a sad­ness of con­fu­sion about John. He never again preached as he had be­fore bap­tiz­ing Je­sus. He some­how felt that the re­spon­si­bil­ity of the com­ing king­dom was no longer on his shoul­ders. He felt that his work was al­most fin­ished; he was dis­con­so­late and lonely. But he preached, bap­tized, and jour­neyed on south­ward.

135:10.2Near the vil­lage of Adam, John tar­ried for sev­eral weeks, and it was here that he made the mem­o­rable at­tack upon Herod An­tipas for un­law­fully tak­ing the wife of an­other man. By June of this year (A.D. 26) John was back at the Beth­any ford of the Jor­dan, where he had be­gun his preach­ing of the com­ing king­dom more than a year pre­vi­ously. In the weeks fol­low­ing the bap­tism of Je­sus the char­ac­ter of John’s preach­ing grad­u­ally changed into a procla­ma­tion of mercy for the com­mon peo­ple, while he de­nounced with re­newed ve­he­mence the cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal and re­li­gious rulers.

135:10.3Herod An­tipas, in whose ter­ri­tory John had been preach­ing, be­came alarmed lest he and his dis­ci­ples should start a re­bel­lion. Herod also re­sented John’s pub­lic crit­i­cisms of his do­mes­tic af­fairs. In view of all this, Herod de­cided to put John in prison. Ac­cord­ingly, very early in the morn­ing of June 12, be­fore the mul­ti­tude ar­rived to hear the preach­ing and wit­ness the bap­tiz­ing, the agents of Herod placed John un­der ar­rest. As weeks passed and he was not re­leased, his dis­ci­ples scat­tered over all Pales­tine, many of them go­ing into Gal­i­lee to join the fol­low­ers of Je­sus.

• John Zebedee

139:4.13John was in prison sev­eral times and was ban­ished to the Isle of Pat­mos for a pe­riod of four years un­til an­other em­peror came to power in Rome. Had not John been tact­ful and saga­cious, he would un­doubt­edly have been killed as was his more out­spo­ken brother James. As the years passed, John, to­gether with James the Lord’s brother, learned to prac­tice wise con­cil­i­a­tion when they ap­peared be­fore the civil mag­is­trates. They found that a “soft an­swer turns away wrath.” They also learned to rep­re­sent the church as a “spir­i­tual broth­er­hood de­voted to the so­cial ser­vice of man­kind” rather than as “the king­dom of heaven.” They taught lov­ing ser­vice rather than rul­ing power—king­dom and king.

• Roman law allowed one friend to stand with prisoner

183:5.3About this time John Zeb­e­dee, re­mem­ber­ing his Mas­ter’s in­struc­tions to re­main al­ways near at hand, hur­ried up near Je­sus as he marched along be­tween the two cap­tains. The com­man­der of the tem­ple guards, see­ing John come up along­side, said to his as­sis­tant: “Take this man and bind him. He is one of this fel­low’s fol­low­ers.” But when the Ro­man cap­tain heard this and, look­ing around, saw John, he gave or­ders that the apos­tle should come over by him, and that no man should mo­lest him. Then the Ro­man cap­tain said to the Jew­ish cap­tain: “This man is nei­ther a traitor nor a cow­ard. I saw him in the gar­den, and he did not draw a sword to re­sist us. He has the cour­age to come for­ward to be with his Mas­ter, and no man shall lay hands on him. The Ro­man law al­lows that any pris­oner may have at least one friend to stand with him be­fore the judg­ment bar, and this man shall not be pre­vented from stand­ing by the side of his Mas­ter, the pris­oner.” And when Ju­das heard this, he was so ashamed and hu­mil­i­ated that he dropped back be­hind the marchers, com­ing up to the palace of An­nas alone.