Reddit reviews Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft (English and German Edition)

The book EVERYONE should read about torture is called "Highroad to the Stake" about a family of German vagrants in the 1600's who are taken captive and tortured into confessing to being agents of the devil and then horrifically killed in a public execution. Not sure if the book is in print but as the link shows there are enough copies around to buy it (or of course check out your local library).

In any case, what is so useful is that the German officials who carried out the torture in question documented EVERYTHING they did, insofar as they saw nothing immoral in what they were doing. The author of the book thus has excellent documentation for showing how torture-for-confession was thought of and implemented.

In the case in question, it is very clear the false confessions were needed as part of the rationalization for the public execution. Before the family (and their cohorts) are killed, the confession is read to the public.

In this case and others I have read about (false confessions were also well documented in the Reformation and counter-reformation), I have to say, I am not seeing much evidence of the US government openly using false confessions to rationalize their actions in the same way as was common in the past.

As such, in what I see as an absence of evidence, I am much more inclined to see the torture program as being a cover for psychological experimentation on both prisoners and the prison staff - but that the idea is so repellant the evidence is still being covered up.

I don't know the answer to your title question but good on you for realizing that for much of history there were no professional police forces in much of the world.

>Before then how was law enforcement done?

I recommended this book in another context tonight, but will do so again: Highroad to the Stake which is primarily about the trial/execution of a vagrant family in a seventeenth century German city - but it goes into a lot of details of law enforcement in tha time period (something the witch trials are related to).

Very generally speaking though, in big cities, a 'Constable' was an official hired to be in charge of organizing law enforcement and usually he might have a few 'deputies' as full time assistants - for the most part, local men were obliged to serve for a period of time as deputies and patrolling the streets after nightly curfews.

In the countryside, landowning nobles were the 'law' and their bailiffs or whatever would be their enforcers.

Highroad to the Stake

A family of vagrants tortured into confessing to being witches in 1600's Germany because the city fathers wanted to hold a big, showy torture/execution with the intent of deterring crime.

Really horrific stuff and all true.

Here is a great and pretty short essay "Going to see a Man Hanged) by famous (at least in some circles) English author William Thackeray about just that - attending a public hanging for the first time and his reaction to it.