Up to the eighteenth century
punishment for criminal activities
was both physical and visceral,
with burning, drowning, hanging,
beheading transportation and more
being some of the many ways
of keeping a society 'civilised'.
Of the old punishments
only hanging remained on the statute books
of more progressive legislative assemblies
until the mid twentieth century.
Though the electric chair remains
as the way by which
to vent the older, more vengeful, urges.
Nowadays confinement in isolation
is the common punishment,
where how slowly time lapses
is meant to purge us of our crimes
and make us more virtuous.
But how can silence save us
it when, as many systems of justice
have eventually proved,
many have not committed
any crime in the first place?
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