The Ducking Stool Never Died - It Became Remand

The ducking stool was built for a simple purpose: public control. Strap a "WITCH" to a chair, wheel her to water, dunk her, and let the crowd do the rest. It was humiliation engineered into wood and iron, aimed mainly at women whose words were judged "disorderly". In some places it was lethal by accident or design: cold water, panic, illness, and the jeering certainty that the victim "deserved it". The point was not justice; it was compliance.

We flatter ourselves that this belongs to a barbaric past. Yet modern Britain still runs a system with the same core logic: punishment before proof. Remand means holding someone in prison while they await trial or sentencing. It is supposed to be exceptional, used only when a court believes there is a real risk the person will not attend, will commit further offences, or will interfere with witnesses. Bail is the starting principle. But once the word "risk" enters the room, principle shrinks.

Here is the uncomfortable number: in England and Wales the remand population stood at about 17,700 at the end of September 2025, including over 11,600 people who had not been tried. That is a small town of legally-innocent people living behind doors that lock like everyone else's. Some are ultimately acquitted, have their case dropped, or are sentenced to something that would not have justified the time they already spent inside. The harm is quietly baked in.

Remand is not pitched as humiliation. It is framed as administration: "to be held until trial". But the lived experience is punishment. You lose your job, your housing, contact with your children, your mental stability. You are labelled by the public as guilty because you are in a prison uniform, behind a prison wall. That is the modern crowd, just dispersed: social media, local gossip, employers, landlords, schools. The dunking has been replaced by a spreadsheet, a transfer van, and a cell.

The law tries to limit how long people can be kept waiting. Custody time limits exist, but they can be extended, and delays elsewhere in the system can turn "short-term" remand into a long, grinding sentence without conviction. The state calls it process. The person living it calls it life being dismantled.

What makes it worse is how routine the decision can become inside a system clogged by delay. Remand calls are often made quickly, with imperfect information, in busy courts. When lists are overflowing, "keep them available" can slide from last resort to default. The Justice Committee defines remand as being held in prison until trial or sentencing; that bland phrase hides a brutal reality when hearings drift for months. Each extra week in custody piles on pressure to plead, pressure on families, and pressure on the truth.

So the comparison is not melodrama. The ducking stool punished "bad character" in advance. Remand, used casually, punishes suspicion in advance. Both send the same message: you are a problem to be managed, not a citizen with rights. And in both eras, the system works best when the public looks away.