Throughout history, governments have abused their power over their people and created societies that suppressed people’s beliefs. They used their power to put an end to people’s beliefs that went against their own and persecuted them unfairly. This idea is evident in the book, The Crucible by Arthur Miller. In Salem, teenage girls were accusing a multitude of people for being witches and the penalty for this was death. The government and church felt threatened everywhere they went, and ended up finding innocent people guilty for that reason. The courts, where the trials were held, were very corrupted and did not provide fair trials. The leader of the courts is Judge Danforth, who was very arrogant and the only opinion he thought that mattered