ABSTRACT
The conventional wisdom is that colonial America was deeply religious. Whether it were the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, or the Amish of Virginia, they all shared one common concern namely, that there existed a generic relationship between sin and crime: those who committed sin were also likely to commit crime. Thus, it was incumbent upon all God fearing members of the colony to combat against a wide range of evil forces that lurked within the colonies, facilitating the sin-crime synergy. The belief in a sin-crime synergy led to the rise of penal measures and procedures that by modern standards were cruel and unusual despite the fact that colonial penal philosophy, following its Judeo-Christian core values, adhered to the principles of justice and fairness in punishment. Exploring these issues in some details, the thrust of this chapter is that despite all modern efforts to secularize penal measures, American penal philosophy in its epistemic core has remained faithful to its Judeo-Christian thrust of fairness in punishment.
