Death Penalty In The Late 1700s And Early 1900s

To receive the death penalty in the United States of America, one must commit murder, treason, or genocide, and to do that, one must be a truly bad person. So how is it possible that men, women, and children could receive capital punishment for something as small as cutting down a tree or stealing $30 before the prison reform? Between the late 1700s and early 1900s, the world went through many reforms, aiming to improve schools, drinking laws, mental hospitals, and the number of immigrants. Before the reforms, America was not in a good place. Women and immigrants were oppressed, alcoholism was encouraged, and punishments for crimes were harsh. One of those reforms was the prison reform, which aimed to keep prisoners in cells with food and outside time, aiming to reform them into better people that could

Before the reform, punishments for crimes were harsh and unfair. Crimes as small as stealing a rabbit, being sneaky in the dark, and cutting down a tree could get someone sent to Australia, branded, whipped, put in the stocks, or even sentenced to death, no matter their age or gender. Prisons were meant to be places where criminals were put for short periods of time, usually until their trial or until they paid their taxes or loans. However, over time, people started saying that the death sentence was highly unethical and not good for children, who would watch these public executions, and started petitioning for a change. Prisons started being built with the intent of reforming prisoners by keeping them isolated and doing physical labor, giving them more time to reflect on themselves. Reformers like Dorothea Dix advocated for the insanity defense, which made it so that people who were mentally unstable or clearly insane would be put in a mental hospital instead of a