ABSTRACT
In dealing with criminals, the state's first goal was to physically eliminate the most dangerous people. Second, the spectacle of gruesome torture should deter potential criminals from engaging in wrongdoing. The state in many ways followed the same strategy in dealing with vagabonds, seen as potential criminals. Positive approaches to vagrants and similar folk were partially due to human nature, compassion for other human beings, if these humans were not a threat. While vagabonds were often deported to distant colonies or severely beaten, it was not this that gave rise to the indignation of those who studied the position of marginal people in early modern Europe but, rather, another type of punishment, the workhouses. The critics of the workhouse see problems with the brutal slavery that provided morsels of food and dubious shelters for slave work as a safety net.
