History of Criminal Justice - Pre-modern Europe

Pre-modern Europe

For the most part, crime was viewed as a private matter in Ancient Greece and Rome. Even with offenses as serious as murder, justice was the prerogative of the victim's family and private war or vendetta the means of protection against criminality. Publicly owned slaves were used by magistrates as police in Ancient Greece. In Athens, a group of 300 Scythian slaves was used to guard public meetings to keep order and for crowd control, and also assisted with dealing with criminals, manhandling prisoners, and making arrests. Other duties associated with modern policing, such as investigating crimes, were left to the citizens themselves. The Roman Empire had a reasonably effective law enforcement system until the decline of the empire, though there was never an actual police force in the city of Rome. When under the reign of Augustus the capital had grown to almost one million inhabitants, he created 14 wards, which were protected by seven squads of 1,000 men. If necessary, they might have called the Praetorian Guard for assistance. Beginning in the 5th century, policing became a function of clan chiefs and heads of state.

During the Middle Ages, crime and punishment were dealt with through blood feuds (or trial by ordeal) between the parties. Payment to the victim (or their family), known as wergild, was another common punishment, including for violent crimes. For those who could not afford to buy their way out of punishment, harsh penalties included various forms of corporal punishment. These included mutilation, whipping, branding, and flogging, as well as execution. Västgötalagen specifies exactly how much to pay, if anything, depending who was slain. The primary form of state-administered punishment during ancient times and the Middle Ages was banishment or exile. Though a prison, Le Stinche, existed as early as the 14th century in Florence, incarceration was not widely used until the 19th century.

The Anglo-Saxon system of maintaining public order was a private system of tithings, since the Norman conquest led by a constable, which was based on a social obligation for the good conduct of the others; more common was that local lords and nobles were responsible to maintain order in their lands, and often appointed a constable, sometimes unpaid, to enforce the law.