Being in prison

If this verse were to be considered to address it, the conclusion might be to keep them incarcerated until time for execution.

 

They killed everyone for serious crimes in Leviticus.

 

In OT and NT, prison was for folks awaiting trial. Sometimes, like Paul in Rome, it was house arrest with guards.

The punishments in Israel could be fines, exile, death but I can’t recall any “prison” where people stayed as punishment.

Since prisons are a secular institution, I suppose it falls under obedience to secular authorities.

peace to you

 

And some received the death penalty for things we don’t consider to be crimes at all, much less serious crimes.

I once heard someone review all the things punishable by the death penalty in the US at one time or another. I was surprised that stealing grapes made the list.

I didn’t verify the story with my own research. It was still very interesting.

peace to you

 

Thanks. There it is, the death penalty for stealing grapes. Amazing.

peace to you

 

Regarding Rome, that doesn't really tell the whole story. Imprisonment alone may not have been common, but some convicts were confined as forced labor. There were also convicts held and forced to provide entertainment in the arena, which usually led to death. Consider:

Sentenced to physical labor
For relatively minor crimes, a person might be condemned to work on public projects for a fixed period of time. Projects included building roads, maintaining aqueducts, and cleaning and maintaining sewers and public accommodations such as latrines and public baths. The convicted person did not lose Roman citizenship and was released after the labor was completed.

During the Principate (early Empire), new types of condemnation to labor were in essence slow death sentences. One such sentence was damnatio in metalla or damnatio ad metalla. This stripped the convicted persons of citizenship and made them penal slaves. They worked in the mines or quarries until they died, which usually didn’t take long.

Crime and Punishment - Life in the Roman Empire​