Colonial courts prosecuted customary practices like compensation payments as crimes.
Evidence
This did not mean, Panty explained, that the commandants were no longer to refer to custom; but they were now formally required to prosecute such acts allowed by custom that they found morally reprehensible, as well as all breaches of the administration’s public ordinances, in the interest of public welfare. Included in this category were “cannibalism” and “ritual murder … whose legitimacy in the eyes of the natives we will not accept,” and “the numerous crimes that are not punished by a penalty, inflicted in the name of society, but by compensation accorded to the victim or his family.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 430
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- QUESTION: The rejection of restitution-based justice in favor of punishment is a huge shift in legal philosophy — how did it destabilize communities whose entire justice system rested on compensation?
- XREF: The imposition of Western punitive justice over African restitution-based justice parallels debates about restorative vs. retributive justice in modern criminal law.