The California prison system alone has more inmates than France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the Netherlands combined. .
The purpose of incarceration has had several motives throughout history. The first and foremost, was to punish the violator of some law or custom of the society where the offense took place. However, incarceration as a punishment has always put a burden on the convening authority and in earlier times, prior to the nineteenth century, punishments were inflicted swiftly and publicly in many forms and fashions. Incarceration was only used to temporarily hold persons until their trial or hearing. This, however, sometimes took days, months, or even years! .
In 1775 an offender, Thomas Randolph at Piscataway Township, New Jersey was convicted of being a public nuisance as a protestor against the Continental and Provincial Conventions, and he, being judged a person of not consequence enough for a severer punishment, was ordered to be stripped naked, well coated with tar and feathers and carried in a wagon publicly around the town. As soon as he earnestly begged pardon and promised to atone, as far as he was able, he was released to return to his house in less than half an hour.1 .
Public humiliation and shaming were used often and usually the more severe punishment was whipping. But a second motive of incarceration was to remove the offender from society to protect others, or to protect the offender from himself or others. Sex offenders and other predators were sentenced and incarcerated to separate them from the innocent, and to punish them by removing their freedom. In modern times this incarceration was to provide some form of rehabilitative treatment as well. .
The more compelling motive for incarceration is the social dilemma we find ourselves in today. It is the removal of a society's embarrassing degenerates while at the same time satisfying a political virtue of "a get tough crime policy".
