Because you made a wholesale statement that people were meaner and harder in the past [than now]. I take issue with that statement.
Currently, millions of babies are slaughtered before birth. What can be harder and meaner than that?
Regarding punishments, certainly there were various times in history when people were mercilessly punished for what we would consider minor infractions.
But counter that with what we have today - murderers getting off with nothing, wife (and husband) beaters, incredible child abuse both sexual and merely "regular", revolving door prisons, meth and other drugs turning people into vicious addicted animals and the gangs who sell the drugs, enriching themselves on human misery.
Humanity is no more civilized now, despite the trappings of technology. Quite a few years ago I read several eye witness and well researched books about Nazi concentration camps - books like "Treblinka", "Babi Yar", "Dora", "Anus Mundi" and several others*. You should read them. People are no better now, and such horrors are bound to happen again for that very reason.
And the question then naturally arises: Well, what makes people good?
Techonology and modern medicine certainly don't make people good, or happy. Well, what does? I know the answer, and it isn't to be found in greater quantity now than in the 19th, 18th, or 17th centuries.
*You may think, "Oh, I know about the horrors of the concentration camps already." I thought that too, until I actually read a half a dozen detailed books about them. It's quite an education to read thousands of pages of details.
But at least before abortion and many changes in the sixties, the average person from the USA and most Western countries, were not as hard and mean as people from almost anywhere in the Middle Ages and before. Neither were our authorities. In Britain, Henry the 8th was chopping his wives heads off. There was far more physical cruelty and brutality in the West then, during peace time, as evidenced by the story of William Wallace in Braveheart, for instance. And of course, going back even farther, there was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
But in modern times, with the legalization of abortion and declining morality, the average citizen in the west is reverting back to a more barbaric state. Life in America is far more dangerous than it was 40 or more years ago. People growing up during the depression and WWII in the inner cities have memories of sleeping in the park and on their porches during hot summer evenings. One would be out of their minds to attempt something like that today.