Eighth Commandment

Prisons

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Prisons

Genre: Speech

Track: 88

Dictation Name: RR130AV88

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Leviticus 18:24-30. Our subject: Prisons. “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the Lord your God.”

Our subject this morning is Prisons. On several occasions, we have touched on the matter and we have seen that there is no prison system in biblical law. In fact, there is no reference in the law to prisons. In Leviticus 24:12 and Numbers 15:34, there are references to men under arrest being kept in custody pending a trial, but not until the time of the kings was there an actual prison, and even then, it’s only purpose was to hold men in custody pending their trial. Imprisonment, therefore, was no part of biblical law as a punishment. There was no formal means of holding men in custody, even in the time of the kings for any protracted time, except to throw them in the lower parts of the king’s palace, which served as a dungeon. Thus Jeremiah, when he was illegally held in custody, was thrown into a deep pit which was apparently an abandoned well in the king’s palace.

The method of dealing with criminals in biblical law is basically three-fold. First of all, there was, as we have seen, capital punishment for capital offenses and for all incorrigible criminals, and as we have seen, this lingered on in American law so that, until fairly recently, in many states, the third time offender, some states four times, was executed. One such case is now still pending before the Supreme Court.

Second, for all other offenses, that is offenses that were not capital offenses, restitution to restore godly order was required, so that the thief was required to restore that which he had stolen, plus an equivalent amount, at a minimum.

Third, where the criminal was unable to make restitution, he had to enter bond service to work out his restitution.

Now, the principle of the biblical law is clearly set forth in our scripture. The whole point of the law is to restore godly order and to avoid defiling God’s land. “The earth is the Lord’s.” Therefore, God, throughout the law, in passage after passage declares, “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.” In other words, man has two directions to go. Either he restores the earth and makes it again the garden of God, a paradise under God, or else he pollutes it by his sin, by his iniquity, and the earth casts man out. Man is subject to God’s judgment. [

Because of this, God says, “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments.” And goes on to emphasize emphatically that sin defiles a man and the land. It destroys and upsets God’s order. Therefore, God upsets and destroys every man and every order that defiles the earth. Man’s purpose is to restore the earth, to build. It is reconstruction, and when he turns aside from that task, he faces judgment. This was biblical law.

When Christianity moved into the Greek and Roman civilizations, an unhappy compromise began with Greco/Roman criminology, with pagan criminology. Now, Greeks, Romans, pagans, all of them had strong elements of restitution in their law, but they also leaned very heavily towards punishment. As a result, the idea of punishment began to creep into the law. We know from the New Testament, that one of the forms of punishment among the Romans was torture, and various other like means. Imprisonment, at times, for a limited period, but even then, when prisons finally came in it was in fairly recent times, in the 18th century, and when they first came in, they were not as places of confinement, but basically, in the preceding period, for torture or to hold men for ransom. When they came in as a regular means of imprisonment in the 18th century, they were a product of humanism.

We read, for example, in one of the English criminologists of over a century ago, Major Arthur Griffiths, “It must be borne in mind that all this time, that is, prior to the 18th century, the prisons were primarily places of detention, not of punishment. The bulk of those committed to their safekeeping were accused persons awaiting trial and due process of law or debtors, and of these again, by far the most numerous class were the impecunious and the unfortunate, whom a mistaken system locked up and deprived of all means of paying their liabilities. Now and again an offender was sentenced to be imprisoned in default of payment of fine, or to pass the interval between certain periods of disgraceful exposure on the pillory. Imprisonment had as yet no regular place in the code of penalties, and the jail was only the temporary lodging of culprits duly tried and sentenced according to law. The punishment most in favor in these ruthless times was death.” We will come back perhaps, at a later date, to the matter of the common use of the death penalty. It came from Anglo Saxon law, just in passing.

The rise of humanism, thus, led to radical changes to the biblical system which was death for capital offenses for incorrigibles and restitution for others. Savage punishment was the first corrective in terms of humanism. The humanists felt that punishment would reform people. Then, the next corrective was to get rid of them, deportation, and so there was a period, as we know from English history, more intimately, when convicts were deported. Some were deported to this country. Most were deported to Australia. So that deportation was the idea, because it was believed if these people were taken over to a new country and given a fresh start, all would be well. Well, the consequences for Australian history were, for a long time, very, very ugly. These people did not become new people in a new land. They became all the uglier criminals.

Then, after the deportation method, the prison system, as a saving thing, became more and more advanced. The belief that punishment and loss of liberty would lead to reformation. Now, imprisonment, as punishment, has given way to the idea of rehabilitation. In California, we’re quite familiar with this because we have one class of prisons called correctional facilities. The last word you can use in those institutions is to call them a prison. They’re not. These are for the better class of prisoners who are going to be rehabilitated. As you know, the papers within the past week reported one guard being stomped to death by these model prisoners.

Now, as we analyze the idea of criminologists today, we find that they are turning, increasingly, against everything they have done so far. For example, James B. Bennett writes, “The old doctrine that the purpose of the criminal law is to exact from the criminal a retrobutist{?} suffering proportionate to the seriousness of the offense has given way to the effort to combine deterrents and public protection with restoration of the offender to a more self-sustaining role in the community.” I might add that this man and others, as they survey the prison system and all, assume that this is one of the evils they’ve inherited from us. They won’t admit that it was their idea, that they overthrew the doctrine of restitution as scripture teaches it, for the prison system, so they always, these humanists, turn around and treat everything that they are discarding as somehow our property, but there are certain basic errors in the perspective of Bennett and other criminologists.

First of all, his statement shows that the criminal law is invested with a religious and a messianic role. They feel that they have a duty to save the criminal. Now, this asks more of the law than the law can deliver. It makes the psychiatrist or the criminologist into a savior, really, into a Christ whose duty it is to save men.

Moreover, as I’ve indicated, they misinterpret history. They see retribution as though it meant exacting suffering. Now, this was a humanistic idea. The doctrine of retribution in terms of the Bible, or the doctrine of vengeance, means giving justice where justice is due and involved restitution. Vengeance is not an ugly word. It’s a godly word, and God insisted that vengeance is his prerogative. “Vengeance is mine. I will repay saith the Lord.” Now, what does that means? It means, first of all, that God directly intervenes to exercise vengeance against men and nations, but then God also ordains systems of vengeance, criminal law, in terms of scripture, to exact the death penalty and to exact the requirement of restitution. Now, this is God’s vengeance, and it’s a very important thing.

Then third, the perspective of Bennett and other modern criminologists is individualistic. Now, they wouldn’t like being called individualistic because they are basically socialists, which we cannot take away from that. But, when they deal with a criminal, all they’re concerned about is the individual, the criminal. They’re not interested in society then. They’re not interested in what the criminal has done to the social order or to his victims. So the very thing they accuse us of, being individualistic, they are guilty of in a very fearful way. Their individualism, when it comes to crime, dissolves the criminal of any responsibility to society, and as a result, they make it their duty to save the man, and they become individualistic where they should be social. Salvation is personal, law is not when it is the law of the society.

As a result, they turn the law into a mockery. They make it the duty of the law to save criminals and of course, the mental health program is applied to criminology as the modern wave. It may come as a surprise to you, but very few people who are sentenced to prison today ever go to prison. It was admitted, on television in the past week by one prominent public official, that only 14% of all those in the United States today who are sentenced to prison actually ever go to prison. Fourteen percent. That’s a startling fact, is it not, and does it not account for a good deal of our problems? Even their own system is not being applied. They are given suspended sentences, or put on probation, or are referred to a psychiatrist, and that’s the answer. So 86% of all men who are sentenced for criminal offenses are on the streets.

Humanism has come full circle. It began by replacing restitution with a prison system, and what it is now in process of doing? It is restoring restitution on a humanistic basis. It is requiring society to make restitution to the criminal for its supposed neglect. This is a result of its environmentalism. They are saying, in effect, that society must make atonement and restitution to the criminal. Restitution thus, is again the standard of the law, but it is a humanistic doctrine of restitution, and humanistic restitution is anti-law, in that it is fundamentally hostile to any concept of any absolute law. Absolute law is replaced with the absolute person. It is not God’s moral order that is important, but the individual, and the result is that when this course is pursued, you have an end to any law order, because a law order cannot be maintained if man is made absolute.

The law order is then replaced with a lawyer order. What is the difference between the two? One of the things this country was most afraid of when it was established was a lawyer order, because humanism was already beginning to introduce it into England. When the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established, and we aren’t told this very often, but one of their first laws was to prohibit anyone from practicing law for money. They were so afraid of lawyers. Why? What did they have in mind? In a few years, of course, that law was removed, but only after they had firmly established their entire legal basis and this, in colony after colony, in terms of biblical law. In a law order, which biblical law alone can provide, every man knows the law. The expression “ignorance of the law is no excuse” is a hangover from the days of biblical law. In terms of biblical law which rests on a fundamental law order in the universe, every man knows that murder is wrong, that theft is wrong, that bearing false witness is wrong, and so on, and as these things are taught by means of Christian schools and Christian churches and Christian homes, they become basic to the character and knowledge of every man.

But supposing you have a lawyer order, arbitrary laws that have no relationship to God’s moral law, and a thing is not murder unless the state defines it precisely and if, as in the state of Michigan a few years ago, a particular form of murder was not covered by the law, then it isn’t a crime. Then how do you know the law? Ignorance of the law is then inescapable, is it not? How are you to know all the laws that the state passes every day of the year? You can’t know them. Your ignorance is inescapable in a lawyer order, because it is positive law, that is, state-enacted law without any reference to a fundamental law order. Even the lawyers do not know the law, because it’s something that’s arbitrary.

Thus, the average lawyer, when he takes a case which deals with a particular facet of the law, has to research the law at that point in order to understand it, and so today, you have legal specialization, and even within their own field, the specialist has to work continually researching the law.

Some ten years ago, I was in the offices of a prominent legal specialist who practices before the Supreme Court, who has held one of the top positions in law in the United States, in Washington, D.C., and who is presently on a Superior Court bench of the State of California, and I listened to him as he answered the phone, dealing with top corporation whose cases he was handling, and his almost stock answer was, “Well, I’ll have to check it at that point, in terms of this or that case that is pending, and this or that decision which has been rendered.” In other words, there was no obvious truth about anything. It all depended on what had been just enacted in a particular state, or in Washington, and what decision had just been rendered, so it was a matter of continual research, and he, perhaps the top authority in his field in the United States, could never say, “This it is,” in terms of a fundamental, moral concept. Now, that’s a lawyer order. The law is no longer meaningful to anyone.

What happens when the law is no longer meaningful to anyone? The law loses its authority, does it not? In a biblical law order where ignorance of the law is no excuse, because the law is written into the being of every man, and every man knows it from scripture and study. Every man can respect the authority of the law and know it, and every man can be a law enforcement agent, the police authority of every citizen.

What happened to this country when you had a law order that was biblical? It made the lawyer the most important man in American society, did it not? That’s the strange fact, but when you examine that fact, it becomes obvious. Until the Civil War, the most powerful man in any community in the United States, was usually the lawyer. Many of the presidents and senators and cabinet members, and governors were lawyers. Why? Being law being basically biblical law, these men were therefore, speaking in terms of common ideas, common beliefs held by every man, so when they spoke, they spoke with an appeal to the heart of every citizen. Every man knew what they were talking about when they set forth their ideals and their concepts in terms of a biblical standard of law. This made the lawyer. After the Civil War, he began to fade. After World War 2, he had given way completely to the politician. Lawyers multiplied in that time, but they went down in their importance. A lawyer society does not mean that it is dominated by lawyers, but that it needs lawyers every time you turn around, because the law now is a mystery that no man can fathom, and therefore, because it is a mystery and no citizen ca hope to understand and cope with the law, he has to have a lawyer every time he turns around.

There is a very significant fact today in when we compare Japan and the United States. Japan still has, very largely, a Shinto law order. That is, it’s a law order based on a religious faith that most of the people, all the people in Japan, were brought up in, so they understand it.

As a result, in Japan, a country of 100 million, there are only 10,000 lawyers. In the United States, a country of 200,000, there are 340,000 lawyers. Quite a relationship, is it not, percentage-wise? There are very few attorneys in Japan because they still have a common religious faith as the background of their law. Now, the number of lawyers are increasing every year in Japan, precisely because they are going onto a humanistic law basis. In a lawyer order, the social cement has eroded, the communication between man and man is gone. Instead of men being tied by a common faith and common morality and a common law, there is an artificial body of statutes to hold society together, and it doesn’t have any roots, and as a result, the society begins to fall apart.

It has been observed that, today, with all the statutes there are, it would be possible to put any man into prison, even though you have never broken the Ten Commandments in any public form. It has been demonstrated that any corporation man, president, or executive, can be imprisoned because so many statutes have been passed that are contradictory.

A few years ago, some officials of various electrical firms were put into prison in a series of trials that were an amazing farce, except that the men went to prison. On the one hand, they were charged with price fixing, and on the other hand, with unfair competition, one with another. You can’t win in a situation like that, and this is what you have when you have statute laws that are not based on a biblical foundation, on a law concept that is open and understandable by all. You have law piling upon law, with endless contradictions. I have cited before the contradictions in the Italian law system where if everybody add all the taxes collected that should be collected from him, they would add up to 120% of his income.

The lawyer order is managed by social scientists, environment rather than sin is blamed for crime, treatment of the offender means restitution to the offender. In 1966, a presidential commission blamed poverty for criminality, and it urged, as the basic pattern of the courts, treatment, mental health. Meanwhile, all around us the humanistic prison system is collapsing radically. There was recently a very grim account of what the prison systems have become, in the Wall Street Journal. “Philadelphia, Robert, a 20 year old accused car thief and check forger should be in a county jail here, but even though Robert couldn’t raise his $800 bail, Judge Alexander F. Barbieri{?} Jr. set him free to await trial. Why? ‘This boy simply would not be safe in a Philadelphia prison,’ the judge explained. ‘Even if he’s guilty, it would be a greater crime to keep him in prison than to allow him to repeat his offenses.’ Judge Barbieri{?} so ruled because Robert, a slightly built youth, was the victim of homosexual rape several times, perhaps ten times, while held in pre-trial custody here. Triggered by the disclosure of similar incidents, one involving a 17 year old victim whose only crime was running away from home, a recent two-month investigation found that sexual assaults are epidemic in the Philadelphia prison system. Investigators conservatively estimated that in two years, there were about 2,000 sexual assaults in jails here. These assaults are not unique to Philadelphia. They are common in many metropolitan jails, authorities say. Homosexual rapes recently have been revealed in county and city prisons in Washington D.C., in its suburbs and in Chicago, among other places. “It’s a result of warehousing a hodgepodge of prisoners in antiquated prisons, where they have little or nothing to do,” says E. Preston Sharp, secretary of the American Correctional Facility.” However, the mental health hospitals that these prisoners are referred to are equally, in many cases, an eyesore. What else could they be? Men who deserve death are kept alive, put into prisons, and it would take more guards than society can afford, to keep them from all kinds of perverted activities, but meanwhile, instead of correcting the matter, we are proceeding further in the direction of humanistic restitution.

For example, note this case of one convicted killer in this area, from the L.A. Times of just recently. “The convicted slayer of a Long Beach police officer has been granted an unprecedented $500 expense account, a valet, and other extraordinary privileges while he prepares to defend himself at his fifth penalty trial. Superior Judge John F. McCarthy did so according to a formal court order of October 29, because he feels that the funds and other privileges are needed by Doyle A. Terry, 40, to adequately prepare his defense. The county will provide Terry with a licensed private investigator, two legal runners, one of whom will serve as Terry’s valet, an additional cell in which to store his files, all the unsupervised personal telephone calls he wants to make, and use of the jail law library {?} will. Terry, who has spent nearly nine years on San Quentin’s death row was convicted in 1960 for the slaying of Officer Vernon J. Owens{?}. Terry was previously sentenced to death in 1960, 1962, and 1965. Another penalty trial in 1965 ended when the jury was unable to agree unanimously on whether he should be sentenced to death of life in prison. Each of his death penalty sentences was reversed by the State Supreme Court, which retroactively applied decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Terry won his second trial because in the first, the prosecution commented, as permitted at that time, on the deterrent effects of the death penalty. He got his third trial because in the second, the prosecution, as it then was allowed to do, told the jury he would be eligible for parole if given a life sentence. His latest reversal came because perspective jurors opposed to the death penalty automatically, as was then permitted, were then excluded. All the privileges granted by Judge McCarthy to Terry appear to exceed those allowed other prisoners acting as their own lawyers, after refusing the services of a public defender. Judge McCarthy said, ‘The Supreme Court might just tell us, Here, you deprived this man of a fair trial because you didn’t let him have telephones, and I don’t think they would pay too much attention to us if we told them the money had not been budgeted.’ Officer Owings{?}, 30 at the time, was shot in the head June 24, 1960 when he and his partner stopped to aid what they thought were two men, one of them Terry, having car trouble on Terminal Island. Terry was captured by pursuing officers a mile from the scene of the shooting. At his first trial, he was also convicted of five counts of robbery and one of conspiracy to commit robbery.”

Now, this case could be multiplied, because since then, this has shown signs of becoming standard treatment. For the environmentalist, proof of the innocence of the criminal is to find something unhappy in his environment. If somehow, some teacher, or a lack of having the best home or the best car, upset him when he was young, then he is innocent. Society is at fault. Not too long ago, a woman who had committed murder, who had murdered her husband, was up for trial, and one of the major pleas for innocence was not that she had not murdered her husband, but because she had been fat earlier, had lost a great deal of weight and suddenly become very attractive and very popular with men, and had killed her husband to be free, and it was not her fault. She didn’t know how to handle her new-found popularity, and had suffered so from being fat through the years. Now, this is seriously being pleaded in this girl’s case.

Meanwhile, the prisoners are more and more turned loose. I indicated earlier that only 14% of those who are convicted actually go to jail. Many of those who are pending trial are out on bail committing repeated crimes. For example, not too long ago, “A Van Nuys man free on $15,000 bail pending court action, involving attacks on nine women and girls in the Van Nuys area has been arrested on charges of attacking a 13 year old girl. This offense led to his arrest on April 10, 1969. In February of 1969, this man was arrested and later arraigned on twelve counts, including four forced rape or child molestation, three kidnap, and one robbery,” and again, the man was given bail. Now, this is the kind of thing that the humanistic law system deals with, and what is the conclusion of this all? What is the direction it is taking?

Consider what one prominent sociologist and criminologist says, from an article last month. “Should state and federal authorities attempt to negotiate with Acosta nostra{?} just as our state department negotiates with hostile foreign powers. Such diplomacy might well serve the interest of non-criminals, suggests Dr. Donald R. Cressy{?}, professor of sociology at U.C. Santa Barbara. A little cold-blooded appeasement is not necessity a bad thing, especially when our side is losing, he writes. He states that some form of negotiation or accommodation, or communication by state and federal officials such as is carried on by local officials, often in a haphazard and corrupt fashion, might lessen the danger that organized criminals will achieve a monopoly on democratic processes in the United States.” Perhaps we should expect soon an ambassador from the United States to the Mafia.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the Mafia, professional criminals, have spent $2 billion a year, in recent years, to corrupt public officials, all the way up from the county sheriffs and courthouses right up into the Supreme Court. Now that statement was made by Victor Rosell{?} and published across the country. Right up to the Supreme Court. Two billion dollars a year. Is it any wonder that we have the problems we do today? There is no absolute law, no biblical law. There is only state law which does not rest on any moral principles. Then why not negotiate with the criminals? Why not accept their bribes if there is no right and wrong? What we are having progressively is a policy of integration with everything. Integration with the criminal world, integration downward into the void. Our text says “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you.”

Sin that is tolerated defiles the land. That’s God’s statement, and is it not also the observation of our own eyes as we look around us? We need again a biblical law order, in which ignorance of the law is no excuse because every man has the law of god inescapably written into his being, and has been taught it in church, home, and school. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, indeed the land has been defiled, and we beseech thee, O Lord, to be merciful unto us, thy people. Cast out those, O Lord, who defile the land, and bring thy judgment upon them, and establish us in thy righteousness, that again, thy law order may prevail, and the land restored and reconstructed. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name. Amen. Yes?

[Audience] When did this insurance practice come about with the restitution{?} Everybody has to {?} insurance today {?} left out. So, when did that {?}

[Rushdoony] The idea of insurance has come about as a survival of the old biblical law. It changed. It’s gone from criminal law into civil law or actions for restitutions here, but it is one of the few areas where we have the principle of restitution still surviving. However, it does not move strictly in terms of the biblical principle. It moves in terms of what a soft-hearted jury may award. So you see, first you have to file, and here again, it doesn’t go to the court automatically. Whereas, under a biblical system it would automatically go. It wouldn’t be at your expense, in other words. It’s a part of the criminal justice.

[Audience] So did they have a {?}. I know that Paul said {?} did they have {?} in biblical times?

[Rushdoony] We’ll come to that matter when we deal with the ninth commandment, so let’s leave court procedures to that time. Yes?

[Audience] {?} other {?}other nationalities {?} have a similar {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, to a degree they do. In other words, wherever you have a non-humanistic and a religious order other than humanistic, you have a common body of beliefs, as Shintoism and Muslim law, so that everybody knows it, because it rests on certain basic ideas. Yes?

[Audience] {?} the idea that {?} and in Arabia, and Arabians, most people are {?} Americans because they’re not as fast as {?} within a matter of days.

[Rushdoony] Well, yes and no. There is a certain amount of restitution, not too much, in Muslim law. Basically, it’s punishment. A thief has his hand cut off. So it is torture and punishment that is basic to them, but they are very quick about it. In Saudi Arabia, for example, according to people who’ve been there, and other similar Arab countries, if a man is convicted of theft, and he’s brought to trial almost instantaneously, he’s taken out and his hand put on the chopping block, and that’s it.

[Audience] {?} I forgot what they call {?} military men {?} different countries {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Again, you see, the whole idea gets away from the biblical premise that ignorance of law is no excuse. How can you be knowledgeable of law in Turkey, when it doesn’t rest on any fundamental moral principle, or of say, in India, or elsewhere? And as a result, countless numbers of American soldiers are in prison. There are many of them in Turkey, for example, but we suppress that fact. The Turks have been especially vicious to our servicemen, and many of them have been arrested for the most harmless and innocent things, and no attempt has been made to do anything about it. So, it has involved a fundamental violation of any justice to our servicemen to put them under this kind of situation.

[Audience] Well I was in France on that {?} go down to the {?} he may be here for a week {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, in some cases and in some countries, some American servicemen, getting their paycheck, by trying to spend American money, not knowing any better, could land in prison. It’s this arbitrary, and this is what happens when you get away from a biblical law order. When you establish the premise that any American anywhere in the world is going to be tried in terms of American law, the principle behind it was that we regarded basic law to be that which the Ten Commandment teaches. Therefore, if he had committed murder in any foreign country, it was going to be a trial for murder. If theft, then for theft, not for violating some statute of which he could never have had any knowledge unless he happened to study the law of that country. Today, ignorance of the law is unavoidable. This is the tragic fact. It’s unavoidable. Therefore, we are all, in some respect, criminals in the sight of the law. Yes?

[Audience] Well, I do believe {?} I would rather {?} pay it off {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, I get your point, but you see you’re assuming that in a biblical law order, these men who were dangerous to have around would be around. In other words, the professional criminal, in biblical law, would not be alive. The person who had robbed would be some person who, through weakness, had committed the crime. Therefore, he would work it out because he knew that if he continued in the way he was living, he would very quickly become subject to death. Remember, I told you of the difference, a few weeks ago, in the architecture of Edom and other surrounding countries, and that of Israel in the law times, how the stone houses in the surrounding countries would have stone doors to withstand siege, but in Israel, in times of law, the homes that were built of tremendous stone walls would have only a curtain door. You didn’t have to worry about thieves coming in at night. In all normal circumstances, because of a biblical law standard, you had eliminated a hoodlum element. This was the difference. Yes?

[Audience]{?}

[Rushdoony] You have put your finger on a very key point. The penitential system of the Catholic system was the system whereby you made atonement for your sin and gained absolution. The humanistic prison system was, from the inception, a religious thing, and so the penitentiary was the place where the convicted men were to do penance and then go forth with absolution. So, it was a deliberate parody, as it were, very seriously intended, of the whole catholic penitential system, penitentiary.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, yes. To do justice to the penitential system, as it originally was, first of all, the penitential system in the early centuries Catholic church, in early Medieval period as it developed, required that first of all, you do restitution through the civil order. So, if you had stolen, you made restitution. Then, within the church, to assure the priest that you were truly repentant, you were penalized or required to go through certain penitential offices to convince them that, while you made restitution not only because you were required to do it, but because you were truly repentant. So, the penitential system originally did require restitution. Later on, it just became a series of exercises, as it were, spiritual exercises.

Well, our time is up.

End of tape