The Tyranny of Government Courts and Prisons - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

The Tyranny of Government Courts and Prisons - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily: "Even the accused criminal or tortfeasor should not be forced to attend his own trial, since he has not yet been convicted. If he is indeed — according to the excellent and libertarian principle of Anglo-Saxon law — innocent until proven guilty, then the courts have no right to compel the defendant to attend his trial. For remember, the only exemption to the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition of involuntary servitude is 'except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.' An accused party has not yet been convicted."

"Instead of incarcerating, say, a man who had robbed a farmer in the district, the criminal was coercively indentured out to the farmer — in effect, 'enslaved' for a term — there to work for the farmer until his debt was repaid. Indeed, during the Middle Ages, restitution to the victim was the dominant concept of punishment. Only as the State grew more powerful did the governmental authorities — the kings and the barons — encroach more and more into the compensation process, increasingly confiscating more of the criminal's property for themselves and neglecting the hapless victim. And as the emphasis shifted from restitution to punishment for abstract crimes 'committed against the State,' the punishments exacted by the State upon the wrongdoer became more severe.