Douglas Greenberg's Crime, Law Enforcement, And Social Control In Colonial America

Published on the heels of Billing’s article, Douglas Greenberg’s “Crime, Law Enforcement, and Social Control in Colonial America” (1982) examines the effectiveness and factors of colonial law enforcement. Unlike New England’s legal system, which he describes as the most effective in seventeenth century America, “the Chesapeake colonies weathered a terrifying degree of conflict that was reflected not only in personal assaults and frequent thefts, but in substantial political violence as well.” He argues that the Virginia colony was at an innate disadvantage in terms of social order since the unequal sex ratio and age distribution meant a high level of violent crime. As such, stable family units which could have helped in subduing such undesired

Specifically addressing the charges of fornication and bastardy, he writes “Virginia courts may have shown somewhat more interest in undertaking such prosecutions, but in both colonies death rates were so high and birth rates so low that any birth, whether legitimized by marriage or not, was cause for celebration rather than criminal prosecution.” Further mitigating the more violent elements of Virginia law was the fact that the death penalty was seldom carried out except for the most heinous crimes due to the chronic labor shortage in the

Its rulers were unable to govern, its social institutions were ill-defined, its economy was undeveloped, its politics were unstable, and its cultural identity was indistinct.” Yet despite this near-anarchic atmosphere, David Hackett Fischer in Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), concludes that the legal system was fairly effective because it succeeded in fulfilling its main purpose, to strictly enforce the colony’s hierarchical system. Therefore, the proliferation of moral crimes or violence committed among colonists of lower status was irrelevant in determining the deterrent effect on society because that was never the primary intent of the colony’s legal system. The Virginia courts enforced this hierarchical/patriarchal idea of showing deference and respect to one’s “superiors,” whether it involved the relationship between master and slave, father and son, or husband and wife. Violent crimes which threatened this social system were therefore savagely punished, and as a result “there was remarkably little violence by the poor against the rich, or by the humble against the elite.” A defendant’s position within those relationships played an important role in assigning their punishment. Virginia law considered the murder of a patriarch treason, punishable by death. Moreover, literate members of society belonging disproportionately to the elite class could always