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The Oxford History of Prisons: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society.

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From: The Economist (US)
Date: 19960316
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EVERY new society, wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne in one of his cheerier moods, is soon in need of a graveyard and a prison. The glum tale of western punishment, as told in the excellent "Oxford History of Prisons", a set of essays by social historians and penal experts, would seem to bear him out: prisons are wasteful, unjust--and indispensable.

Penal reform and counter-reform have followed each other through recent times in a melancholy cycle. Enlightenment reformers devised the modern prison and swifter execution as humane alternatives to branding, maiming or brutally prolonged ...

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