Why was jail usually not an option in medieval times?

Answer 1

Prisons have been used through history, but in most societies, they were not used as a form of punishment. Instead, they were used as places to hold people accused of capital crimes for trial, and people found guilty of capital crimes until they were punished. They were also used in some places to hold debtors who failed to pay, so their families would get money together to get them out.

In the early Middle Ages, punishments were usually in the form of fines; petty crimes were punished with light fines, and important crimes, such as murder, were punished with heavy fines. A person who could not pay the fine was sold into slavery.

Later on, it became possible to punish petty crimes with punishments that were intended to be humiliating, such as putting a person in the stocks, so passers by could throw things at them. This had the advantage of making it important for people to get along in society, because if an unpopular person was put in the stocks, there might be no telling what could be thrown at him.

The people of villages and towns were all well known to one another, so it was possible to punish a person by confining him to a specific area of the town, depending on the people of the town to report any infringements.

Serious crimes were tried by royal courts in the cities. Prisons were sometimes used to hold accused criminals awaiting trial, but in England, for example, there was not a prison in every county, so people were sometimes sent to another county for trial. Serious crimes were not usually punished with imprisonment, but in other ways. In a worst case, this could be a rather nasty execution. Other forms of punishment included exile and enslavement.

Many criminals escaped punishment by entering monasteries, where they could have sanctuary. This was not a prison, but it might have served the purpose.

The idea of a penitentiary, as a place where a person could reflect on the sins he had committed, be penitent, and be rehabilitated, arose during a period of religious fervor in the 19th century.