The President of the United States of America is still authorised without further approval by Congress to determine an event of insurrection within the United States and to declare the existence of an Internal Security Emergency. Punishment Park, 1971, opening scene
… 15 to 25 years in a federal penitentiary; you have the alternative of undergoing 4 days in Punishment Park. How do you choose? ibid. judge
The grievous charge of conspiracy to undermine the national security. ibid.
Do you want me to tell you what’s immoral? War is immoral, poverty is immoral, racism is immoral, police brutality is immoral, oppression is immoral, genocide is immoral, imperialism is immoral: this country represents all those things. ibid.
Today there are over 50 countries around the world which continue to use the death penalty … It is only a decade since capital punishment was finally removed from British law. Timeshift: Crime and Punishment: The Story of Capital Punishment, BBC 2018
For over 200 years a moral battle raged about whether the state has the right to execute. ibid.
But it was in the late 18th century that the death penalty was applied most widely. ibid.
The participation of the crowd itself which appeared to revel in a macabre party atmosphere. ibid.
Between 1770 and 1830 over 35,000 people were sentenced to death. But only one in ten were actually executed. ibid.
The Victorians were still committed to retaining the death penalty for those convicted of murder. ibid.
The Victorians began to build large prisons across Britain as place of both punishment and reform. ibid.
Pierrepoint became a familiar face to British audiences through numerous television interviews. ibid.
There was still widespread support for capital punishment. ibid.
In 1969 parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of permanently abolishing the death penalty for murder … Hanging only remained for treason and piracy. ibid.
Gary Gilmore became the first person to be executed in the US for ten years … by a firing squad in Utah. ibid.
Corporal punishment – the infliction of pain to punish was once part of everyday life. This is not only the story of punishment in schools, corporal punishment has been part of religious life and of the law. It has been used in the nursery and the bedroom. Timeshift: Crime and Punishment: The Story of Corporal Punishment, BBC 2018
Its slow decline reflects a battle that has raged for over 200 years. ibid.
1817: Public whipping of women abolished; 1829: Branding of thieves abolished; 1830s: End to public flogging of men. ibid.
Whipping moved indoors but it didn’t disappear … This punishment was seen as progress. ibid.
Wife-beating became increasingly unacceptable. ibid.
Corporal punishment was thought particularly suitable for young criminals. ibid.
In 1986 a bill to completely abolish corporal punishment went to the House of Commons. ibid.
Corporal punishment was only outlawed in independent schools in 1999. ibid.
The last 70 years have seen the most momentous changes in British criminal justice and policing, and throughout those decades television has played a highly significant role … a powerful agent for change. Crime & Punishment: A Timewatch Guide, BBC 2019
In 1955 Ruth Ellis shot her lover to death and stood trial for murder. The decision to execute this twenty-eight year old, a mother of two children, fuelled what was already a fierce debate over capital punishment. ibid.
National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment: ‘To kill a man because you’re angry with him for what he’s done is too close to the thing he’s done himself.’ ibid. Gerald Gardiner WC
It wasn’t until 1998 that it was finally removed from the statute book for all types of crime. ibid.
In retrospect it was this case [Bentley] that really spelled the end for capital punishment. ibid.
Gay sex for women had never been criminalised. ibid.
40 years ago Parliament substantially revised the law surrounding rape. ibid.
This film proved shocking in the apparently heartless treatment of a woman who had gone to the police saying she’d been raped by three men. BBC filmmakers were allowed to follow officers of the Thames Valley police … ‘Officers in this case are bullying and cajoling this woman’ … The film caused outrage. ibid.
Little has changed for victims. ibid.
A film in 1971 – Complaints Against the Police – asked whether the police themselves were above the law. ibid.
Russia’s punishment is that no members of the Royal Family will go to the World Cup. Frankie Boyle’s New World Order s2e2, BBC 2018
Interviewer: Do you believe in punishment for abortion – yes or no – as a principle?
Donald Trump: The answer is there has to be some form of punishment.
Interviewer: For the woman?
Donald Trump: Yeah, there has to be some form. MSNBC interview 30th March 2016
Social inequality was part of everyday life. Nepotism and corruption ensured that the upper class retained its privileges. The Truth About Franco: Spain’s Forgotten Dictator III: Zero Hour
Retroactively, Franco had everyone punished who had as he put it had disturbed the social peace. ibid.
From the very beginning Holloway was infamous for a harsh and squalid prison. (Inside Holloway: Women Behind Bars, Channel 5 2020
Holloway’s Victorian founders thought very differently: for them imprisonment meant constant punishment and brutality … ‘a place of Gothic horror.’ ibid.
AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals. Jerry Falwell
There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country we punish men for crimes they commit but never for the opinions they have. Harry S Truman
The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction. On either side it is pride, but understood in a different way. Alexis de Tocqueville, Voyages en Angleterre et en Irlande
The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.
In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest. Bob Marshall, Virginia general assembly, cited newsreader online 22nd February 2010
To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves. Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma