History of criminal justice

The study of how societies have defined crime and organized policing, courts, punishment, and rehabilitation over time.

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Code of Hammurabi: A Babylonian law collection inscribed under King Hammurabi in the eighteenth century BCE. Its written penalties reveal an early state effort to standardize justice.
Trial by ordeal: A medieval method of determining guilt through a physical test believed to reveal divine judgment. Its decline marks a shift from supernatural proof toward human adjudication.
Cesare Beccaria: An Italian philosopher whose 1764 treatise condemned torture and arbitrary punishment. His arguments helped define Enlightenment demands for proportionate, lawful penalties.
Retributive justice: A theory of punishment that imposes penalties because offenders deserve them for past wrongdoing. It contrasts with reform movements that justify punishment by future social benefits.
Prison reform: Efforts to change prison conditions, administration, sentencing, or the use of incarceration. Repeated reform campaigns trace changing standards of punishment and humane treatment.
Twelve Tables: The earliest surviving codification of Roman law, traditionally dated to the mid-fifth century BCE. Publicly displayed rules made Roman legal procedure less dependent on elite custom.
Jury trial: A legal proceeding in which a group of citizens determines facts or guilt. The jury became a central mechanism for judging criminal accusations.
Jeremy Bentham: An English philosopher who developed utilitarian theories of law and punishment. His proposals linked penal policy to deterrence, utility, and institutional design.
Restorative justice: An approach that addresses harm by involving victims, offenders, and communities in repair. It shifts emphasis from state-imposed penalty toward repairing interpersonal and communal harm.
Criminalization: The process by which conduct becomes prohibited and subject to criminal penalties. Changing definitions of crime determine who becomes subject to state punishment.