The point is, the penalties weren't effective -- if effectiveness of a criminal justice system is evaluated in terms of crime prevention. We're talking about a

The point is, the penalties weren't effective -- if effectiveness of a criminal justice system is evaluated in terms of crime prevention. We're talking about an age where there were no police organizations as we currently understand the term: a lot of arrests were made by freelance "thief takers" such as the infamous Jonathan Wilde, who himself eventually went to the gallows (because he wasn't merely a thief-taker, he was also the biggest fence for stolen goods in London!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild (Shorter version: think of him as a kind of 18th century anti-Batman.) Because arrest rates were virtually non-existent except when an angry shopkeeper grabbed a burglar in the act, or a mob went for a known miscreant, punishments were draconian. But because punishments were draconian, they were often commuted -- by the end of the 18th century about half of death sentences ended up being turned into transportation and involuntary servitude (basically, exile and slavery). Crime rates remained terrifyingly high by modern standards until the 1830s, when Sir Robert Peel as Home Secretary abolished and rationalized a lot of laws (he axed the death penalty for most offenses but replaced it with imprisonment) and instituted the first modern police forces: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel Anyway, the takeaway from all this is, the British state in the 18th century performed a large-scale experiment that proved pretty much definitively that draconian punishments do not deter crime. What reduces criminal activity is certainty of apprehension, even if the punishment is relatively mild or rehabilitative. (Nobody thinks "I'd better not steal that pizza, I can probably get away with it but if they catch me I might end up facing life in jail". But knowing "if I steal that pizza, I will be caught" is an effective deterrent.)