No Prisons, No Death Penalty: How would they deal with serious crime?

exile is pretty common. removal from clan/family and given no resources. often that is basically a death penalty but.

 

Ahahaha, this could be a dangerous topic for me. Too easy to get too political. @[email protected]

Hm, hmm, well, the first question that occurs to me is whether you want to portray it as some place "good" or somewhat idyllic, as some place that's primarily functional, or as someplace rather crappy.

Exile, as Joshua mentioned, could work with an option, but there's a different vibe to Dick Dasterdly getting kicked out of the town thanks to our heroes and having him go on a sad wander while he reflects on his actions vs feeding a criminal to the post apocalyptic zombie hordes outside the town.

Other options might come across as darker.

If people feel that the law isn't adequately protecting them. Imagine walled family compounds, duels which aren't... always lethal, and blood feuds going back generations.

Or maybe things are going as intended? The rich and powerful can afford the fines. They can basically do whatever they want. The poor? Whelp, sucks to be them.

Now, if you want some idyllic then I suggest looking into magical options. Perhaps geas are employed to magically ensure they won't repeat the same behavior?

 

branding so every one knows they are a rapist- and shuns them no matter where they go. if people will not give you food, shelter etc... you wont last long. or removal of a hand etc. usually works.

 

Perhaps a sort of "commune"... they are sent to a farm/community, where they must contribute to society for a period of time as determined by the judge/magistrate or whoever. If there is magic, you could use a sort of "anchor" to keep them from leaving the commune until their time is over. It could be designed that the people overseeing the place teach new skills to the "criminals" in hopes that they will find something other than criminal activity to make money. In effect it is a "prison", but without the whole walls/bars/guards thing. The more a person contributes, the more time gets taken off their sentence for good behavior.

 

Lobotomy to remove the insurgent part of the brain so the individual cant rebel or disobey?

 

What, exactly, is the individual's relationship with society? In America we are very "hell yeah PERSONAL FREEDOM," so sitting in jail for the rest of your life is the ultimate punishment, as all those freedoms are taken away (slavery is still legal if you're incarcerated, for example, and even if you're released from prison you can still lose the right to vote, to own a gun, to have most types of jobs etc). Meanwhile in Japan, being shamed in front of society as a whole keeps a lot of crimes from even ever happening. The average Japanese person will never touch cannabis because drug use is seen so poorly by society, while the average American is googling if they can buy weed gummies on Amazon. Also, what is their relationship with the world around them? In New Zealand they hold protecting the environment and the native species so highly that they kill feral cats....meanwhile, Americans have made it illegal to kill feral horses (because horses have "souls" and have more rights as a living thing than, say, a cow), even though they are destroying the environment and also cost the government millions a year to keep thousands of unadoptable horses in horse jail. "Living history" is more important than the environment, I guess.

So in your society, what do people hold dear? If the safety of others is incredibly important, than breaking building codes, driving drunk etc would be unthinkable to the average person. Being shamed and ejected from their community (though not litterally, but from social relationships, like spiritual communities, their job, their friends etc) can do a lot to punish ne'er-do-wells, and the government does'nt even need to get involved! You can also look at ye olden punishments, various "scarlet letters" or pillories people were put through to be embarassed or made a laughing stock. What are the most important rights and freedoms in your society? Is it possible for them to be taken away? Driving isn't a right, its a privilege, and you can lose it from driving unsafely. Freedom of movement, however, is a right, so you could always just walk anywhere, but depending on where you live life is pretty much impossible without a car (so many people drive without a license because they don't have a choice, which creates a terrible feedback loop, but America is very PERSONAL FREEDOM and a car is the pinnnacle of that).

 

Manual labor, if you're forced to work in somewhere like the farm, Is that prison? or just manual labor as a punishment.

 

I think you underestimate the effect of exiling. Especially in the world you describe of close communities and small cities. The exiled person will have no money, no food and no clothes other than what he's wearing. If he shows up in another village people will recognize him for what he is, someone exiled. And with no money, what are you going to do? I've once had the experience to be stuck in a city where I knew no one without any money and I can tell you it's not a pretty place to be in. Unless you're a hardened career criminal you will have worries about how you will feed yourself, where you will sleep and so on. In your world you'll probably end up begging for people to help you. It's not pretty. Especially in small towns and communities where everyone knows everyone else. I would personally consider it one of the worsts punishments you can hand out after a death sentence (when prison is out of the picture).

Other punishments. The forced labor is a good one. As is eye-for-and-eye type of punishments. You hurt someone illegally? They can beat you. You steal from someone? They can take twice the amount from you. Or punishments like the cutting off of hands for stealing, that sort of thing. Branding is another one, and is similar to exile. You visibly mark someone as a criminal and they will have a hard time in their life because few people will trust them. I think a modern equivalent is people with visible gang tatoo's. They often have a harder time finding jobs for instance because people judge them based on their appearance. It's also very permanent.

 

For murder the killer could be forced to work for the family of their victims for whatever number of years is the difference between the victim's life expectancy and their age. In other words, if a victim is a 25 year old peasant farmer who would have a life expectancy of 60 years the killer would be forced to work for the farmer's family for 35 years. This was common practice in traditional Samoan culture.

Castration for sex offenders, exile into remote areas for other serious criminal offenders and branding of minor offenders would also be effective.

 

Close knit communities? Hmm. What is likely to happen to the criminal is social shunning, some form of physical punishment or in really nasty cases a lynch mob. The really big risk in communities like that is that those who don't fit in (for whatever reason) may get accused of something they didn't do. In my experience from various places around the world, close knit communities can be some of the worst places for bullying, informal justice and lack of forgiveness. In that sense, exile might be a very welcome option for a convicted criminal.

 

The problem with exile is if there are enough people, then eventually they could form their own group that subsist on the fringes of civilization by raiding the "law-abiding" communities. With a strong enough leader, this group might even sack whole villages for the resources, take over using the survivors as slave labor.

 

well you need some conflict in your story right? Basically every version of a "punishment" code for bad behavior has negative long term consequences- Just pick the consequence that works best for your world and story.