www.lesswrong.com/posts/FDxvpznjMzGNHjDRS/brackets-are-a-bad-way-to-regulate
1 correction found
The moment you’ve been caught pickpocketing, you’re going to hang
Pickpocketing could carry a death sentence, but execution was not automatic. In practice, many capital convicts were pardoned, and Old Bailey sources say pickpocketing had ceased to lead to executions there by the later 18th century.
Full reasoning
This overstates how 18th-century English punishment actually worked.
Pickpocketing was indeed treated as a capital offense for part of the Bloody Code era, but being convicted did not mean you were automatically executed. The Old Bailey Proceedings explain that many people convicted of capital crimes escaped execution through partial verdicts, benefit of clergy, respites, and pardons, and that between 1780 and 1868 less than a fifth of convicts sentenced to death were actually executed.
The Digital Panopticon's history of pardoning is even more specific: it says that in London the share of capital convicts pardoned rose over time, and that some capital offenses, including pickpocketing and shoplifting, ceased to lead to any executions of Old Bailey convicts in the second half of the eighteenth century.
So while pickpocketing exposed someone to the death penalty on paper, the statement that once caught "you’re going to hang" is historically inaccurate as a description of what actually happened in practice.
2 sources
- Punishment Sentences at the Old Bailey | The Old Bailey Proceedings Online
Through partial verdicts, juries reduced the charges ... Through the mechanisms of benefit of clergy, respites for pregnancy, and pardons many more defendants found guilty of a capital offence were spared the death penalty ... between 1780 and 1868 less than a fifth of convicts sentenced to death were actually executed.
- Pardoning | The Digital Panopticon
The proportion of capital convicts who were pardoned from execution in London increased steadily over time ... From the second half of the eighteenth century some capital offences - including pickpocketing and shoplifting - ceased to lead to any executions of Old Bailey convicts.