Primitive Periods of Criminal Law

Criminal law is a branch of law that examines the structure of human behavior called crime and envisages specific sanctions. When we look at the historical process of criminal law, we see that it has gone through different periods and accordingly a covert stage. In this article, we will examine the primitive period of the history of criminal law and the criminal responsibility that developed accordingly.

Criminal Responsibility in the "Personal Revenge Period"

Punishment is a sanction in return for a behavior that has been foreseen as a crime since the earliest times of societies. It is applied for the purpose of preventing the offender from committing a crime again and improving the society. In the period of personal vengeance, when human beings begin to express themselves, there is no concept of state, even if people begin to live together with the instinct of protection from external factors. It is known that the law in primitive and ancient times is based on an objective responsibility principle that determines responsibility by looking at the result in terms of criminal responsibility. In this period, criminal law was founded on the principle of material responsibility. Therefore, to punish someone, it was enough for that person to do a prohibited act. However, the basis of the punishment system consists of the feeling of revenge against the offender. During this period, a constant state of response prevails. The act expressed as a crime was determined as the actions that the tribe reacted to because the written text was not created. It created the perception that justice was provided in the society during the period of personal vengeance, where only the perpetrator was punished. This system, which provides individualization, is considered to have formed the basis of the principle of individuality of criminal law, which is being applied today. In primitive times, there were different types of sanctions such as exclusion, retaliation and diet.

Exclusion from the clan: The person who commits a crime leaves the place he is in and goes to another place. It is aimed to take advantage of the soothing effect of time for the criminal and in this way a correction. It is also done with the instinct to protect the clan. The perpetrator is pushed out of society and isolated. However, this method created problems in practice, as it led those who were pushed out of the clan to unite and fight against the clan in the long run and facilitate the formation of criminal organizations.

Diet: This institution, which means that the injured party renounces the right to take revenge through compensation, is frequently encountered in the Twelve Tablets, Germanic and Islamic legal systems. It is an agreement between the perpetrator and the victim of the crime. It provides compensation for the damage caused. At times, the amount of damage reached the extent of forcible seizure (confiscation) of almost all of the criminal's property, so the attacker was able to pay for it with the help of his family. Societies envisaging this method in practice generally made it necessary to compromise, and some of the money paid was taken as common income.

Talion Principle (Trial): This concept, also known as the principle of retaliation, is based on the principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". This principle is embodied in the form of harming the person who caused the harm at the same rate and with the same intensity. This institution, which is frequently encountered in the penal laws of many societies, especially in the Code of Hammurabi, carries the belief of repayment (atonement) of a religious nature. In this law, which states that whoever breaks a person's bone will break his bone, and whoever breaks his tooth, his tooth will be broken, everything is mutual and the responsibility is personal. Accordingly, the penalty for the person who kills a person will of course be death. This principle has been envisaged in many periods, from important laws such as the Law of the Twelve Tablets to religious texts such as the Torah. In short, it is progress. Because the limits and intensity of vengeance have been determined, the limits of punishment have been determined and individualized, and it has created the consciousness of justice and equality in people.