The Modern Justice System vs American Colonialism

     In the 18th century colonial America and Britain, indentured servitude was common and is often associated with slavery. This concept and practice had been around for centuries, but it had a lasting effect on society and the economy just before the French and Indian war. Indentured servitude had nothing to do with race and was used in two common ways. The first was voluntary servitude, one would work and live as a servant in the house with a date set for their contract to be fulfilled. The second was to repay a debt owed, often to victims. A judge would often let the victim of a felon determine how the debt to them would be repaid unless the felon opted for the death penalty.

     Many voluntary indentured servants would volunteer so that they could travel to a place better suited for them like Virginia and spend usually seven years working for a house and in return the house would give you funds and help you get settled and on your feet once the time was up. Citizens got laborers, and servants got a better and easier life for themselves in the end.

     Many colonized places like Massachusetts didn’t start out having involuntary slaves at all, but indentured servants. The Dutch brought the colonies in Massachusetts slaves that they hadn’t expected to receive and didn’t know what to do with, so they treated the people with nothing, no one, and often not even a common language, like indentured servants. They were helped during their time as servants and given aid for their hard work at the end of a predetermined time served. Even after slavery became popular in the colonies, slaves were treated differently than what we often hear for a long time, slavery became the institution everyone hears about over time. Slaves who were baptised were no longer considered slaves for a long time because Christians did not practice in using other Christians as slaves. 

     Then there’s the other type of indentured servant. This later grew into the modern justice system similarly to how indentured servitude slowly turned into slavery. An involuntary indentured servant often had a debt they couldn’t settle so they paid it off by way of free labor that lasted years. The justice system also favored this tactic. Judges would often give criminals such as murderers an ultimatum. The idea was a life for a life, so murder meant the death penalty, or give your life as a servant of your victim’s family. Owing a debt to an individual benefits the victims, to simply get the death penalty does not help.

     This meant the leverage was all with the victim, they could ask for money such as $100 a month for the rest of one’s life to settle this, or they could require servitude, or they could refuse to allow the perpetrator any option other than the death penalty.

     That doesn’t mean rich people can go around killing people, the victim can get you killed, or they could take most all your money, or you could serve them. You won’t keep murdering because you’re out of money. Rich people can’t get away with things, all the leverage is with the victim. It isn’t just about murder either.

    To steal is to take opportunities from that money, so you owe double. That’s the general principle. The leverage point is $100 when you steal 50, or work off a hundred bucks to pay back the victim. Or people can negotiate and the whole process goes away.

     This system was all about repairing the victim, so why is it suddenly about criminals paying back a debt to society rather than their actual victim? The government took over. Propaganda messages benefit big politicians, repairing the victim doesn’t. If someone stole from lots of people and they have to get out of jail and get a job before he can pay you back you are never getting back the worth stolen from you, rendering the old system of repaying debts useless in a society that wants criminals in jail. This makes the DA a political success by saying that someone had to pay a debt to society which is more beneficial to big bureaucrats.

     The incentive structure is all messed up because the aims are wrong. If you’re in prison you’re still a slave, you’re just not doing anything useful and taking tax payer dollars by needing funding to live in a jail.

     Part of the problem was chain gains. Innocent people were arrested soon after the ending of slavery just so that they could fill in and do the work the slaves had been doing. This is why prisoners don’t work anymore and are completely useless to society until they maybe get out and maybe successfully rehabilitate. 

     If you allow a free trade system to exist you don’t have to come up with big businesses for every problem. Jails and taxes funding the jails don’t have to be the solution to bad and dangerous people in the world. The system was working better when everyone got something beneficial out of what convicts did to you, and the convicts saw real consequences that didn’t debilitate them. The modern mentality is the same as “If we don’t have slaves then who will pick the cotton?” The answer is right there, we’ve just depended on an institution for so long we don’t know how to solve violence without it. This idea of repaying a debt to society rather than the victim is wrong, it solves nothing aside from occasionally putting a bad guy where he can’t do it again. If you quit doing the immoral thing the economy will grow the answer.