Punishments have varied along with the motives prompting them. Exchanges of value—whether in specie or goods—made atonement a transactional arrangement.

Offenders paid the costs they had imposed. With vengeance, death was the currency of justice. Feuds were often long and sanguinary. Nonetheless, the logic of restitu­tion limited overly bloody revenges. A dead goose laid no golden eggs. Most of the punishments of the past are no longer used: muti­lation (though male sex offenders are sometimes chemically or physically castrated), branding, shame, and humiliation (though public registries of sex offenders and chain gangs still exist), torture (in many nations), banishment (in most nations), and death (in many nations). The punishments that remain, at least in the West, are imprisonment and an endless array of fines.