Crime and punishment in 5 different eras


LC: To use different sentence structures depending on the formality of the writing.


Introduction
Would you like to educate your mind, well look no further! Ever since the beginning of society, crimes and punishment have existed. I will discuss 5 eras of time throughout Britain history and explain crime that happened and the punishments. Through scientific and historic evidence, we have found out theft has been the most common crime. But the consequences for theft has varied a lot throughout history. The 5 eras of time we will analyze will be: Roman times, Anglo-Saxon times, Tudor times, Victorian times and during WW2. These times span across 43AD to 1945AD 
and I will be explaining the crime and punishment during this time in chronological order.

Roman period 
During the time span of roughly 500BC to 400AD, the Roman Empire ruled most of the world. Their army was very powerful so it was no surprise that in 43AD Romans conquered England. Punishments were dealt with red-handed criminals. For those who did not get caught, the witness or the one who got effected with the crime would try and find them. They would either go alone or ask a friend to help them. The punishments heavily relied on the persons wealth or status. For those who were poor or did not have much of a status or not at all, they had more severe and brutal punishments. However if the suspect was a wealthy and noble man, the punishments were less painful but depended more on the money. A common punishment would be a fine but most criminals did not have money as they were committing the crimes because they were poor. If you did not have the money to pay that fine you would get killed by either them pushing you off a cliff, into a river or tied in a sack of animals (including dangerous animals) and thrown into a river. Overtime punishments got more painful as the population grew and the Romans intention was to discourage other criminals. The most brutal crime was crucifixion.

Anglo-Saxon period
During the Anglo-Saxon period, which approximately spanned from 410AD to 1066AD, crimes were a lot less common. Most people lived in a village and very few lived in towns, so everyone in the community knew each other. Major crimes like treason against the king demanded serious punishments like hanging. Whereas small and petty crimes like theft would lead to a fine. Anglo-Saxons thought that if a regular criminal got their hands or legs cut off they could not commit to crime. So they made it so if someone committed crimes regularly or more than once they would get their limbs cut off. There was also a system put in place so if the jury could not decide if someone was innocent or guilty they would have trial by ordeal. This was when a person got severely I injured and within 3 days if the bruise didn’t heal they were guilty. It was thought that god knew if someone was innocent so he would heal the injured spot. Before the system of weregild (the currency that was used to pay off fines) was put in place; the king allowed the victim or victims family to wreck their own justice on the criminal.

Tudor times
In Tudor times, there were many crimes. Most inescapable and leading to death no matter what. Most of the crimes were unreasonable since the criminal did nothing wrong or caused no harm to anyone or society. One of these crimes included witchcraft where if someone has a cat and was mysterious they were considered a witch. The punishment for this crime was the dunking stool, where the witch was dunked into water and if the suspect died they were innocent. But if they survived they were considered guilty and the punishment was death. So either way you would die for doing nothing. Fines were not as common, most crimes resulted to the Death Penalty. One of the most common punishments was hanging, this usually happened when someone committed treason, murder or theft. The most well-known punishment was execution. It was when the criminal got chopped with an axe. Most noble and rich people got this punishment instead of hanging because it was quick.

Victorian era
Throughout the Victorian era, hard labor was the most common punishment. Many Victorians believed that having to work very hard would prevent criminals committing crime in the future. Hard labor also gave money to the people in charge. There were some unreasonable crimes including; begging and being poor. Victorians believed being poor or begging would not be a great role-model for their kids. They thought if people got money for free their kids would do the same. Their was a system going on; the rich was getting richer as the poor was getting poorer. Many people needed money for food and water or clothes to survive out in the cold. Either if you committed treason or small theft most criminals were killed by death. This could be by hanging or some other punishment. During the eighteenth century, crime was at its highest, there was a great chance of being robbed or murdered outside.

World War 2
World War 2 was fought in 1939 to 1945, mostly everything was destroyed. Lots of houses and shops were bombed in the war so it made looting and robbery become more common. Since mostly everything was destroyed, there was no lights in the towns or city’s, increasing crime. Crime dramatically increased as people were in shambles and had nothing. Theft and murder were super common everywhere. Since the war was still going most criminals had no punishments. This made one-time criminals more regular. Once the war dived down a bit. Punishments like prison were now starting to be adjusted. Most criminals were fined or had a prison sentences. The police force increased since the war but looting was still common. If guilty of murder you could be sentenced to death still since the death penalty only stopped in 1964.

An excellent report,  Victor. You have used a good range of different sentence starters, good use of the comma to clause in your sentences and you have chosen and uplevelled key vocabulary to engage your reader too.