1007 AD
The nobleman guided his horse towards the gallows' field. There he could see the pale bones stuck to the wooden wheel. The hooves trampled the blades of grass, still brown with blood. Ravens took to the sky reluctantly as the living beast approached. The knight looked down upon the rags and the rotting flesh. All that held together the remains were the leather straps that had once kept the crook from running away. Here he hung, until the crows would have eaten his tendons and his limbs would drop into the mud.
The knight sniffed and then spit a ball of slime upon the dead creature's skull. It served thieves to be hung, but thieves who stole from the house of God were beyond salvation. Justice was done and the court of Heaven would decide the punishment for this villain. Until then his corpse would hang unto the wheel, just outside the town's gate, as a warning for all to see, a sign that no-one could escape the law.

2007 AD
The social worker saw them smoking on the parking lot just outside the old town's gate. He had to talk to the boy again. The teenager had had the stupid idea to take money from the church's offertory-box. He had forced the main door and simply walked into the building. There he had opened the box with a screwdriver. Obviously he had hoped to get away with it, but the vicar had noticed him and called the police. The social worker had asked him why he had done it, but he had just shrugged. He wanted a new cellphone and cellphones were expensive, the church was rich enough and wouldn't miss it and no, he did not want to go back to school again.
Of course the social worker understood that the problems came from the boy's difficult childhood. His parents were divorced, his father was unemployed, his mother alcoholic and he hung around with the wrong kind of people. Deep inside there was a good kid, but he was just a victim of todays society. He couldn't help it...