PRIMITIVE JUSTICE
As Sutherland points out in his texbook, Principles of Criminology, “The natural history of punishment is a pre-requisite for the efficient direction of future policies. Thus far, this natural history has not been written, except in scattered, unorganised form.” Sutherland mentions that two problems arise in regard to punishment : “The first is concerned with the natural history and psychology of punishment, the second with the value and efficiency of punishment in general, and of particular methods of punishment.” (3) As he correctly points out, much has been written about the utilitarian aspects of punishment, but little about the psychological ones. The remark that Sutherland made in 1934 is still true and one can say that penologists, criminologists, and even for that matter psychiatrists in the field of criminology have been involved rather with the utilitarian ends of punishment. They have amply demonstrated that the various practices of punishment in the past did not achieve their aims. They have dwelt on their sadistic and primitive nature, and in describing them, they cite our primitive and barbarian ancestors. The examples of punishment they quote, however, have often been those imposed in the last century, or in the middle ages, or in earlier civilizations. Historians have perhaps not been too much aware that the punishments they describe as barbaric and primitive were net inflicted by primitive folk, but by people possessing not only an oral but a written tradition of codes, laws, and prescribed punishments.
