> That is what we created it for in the first place
Do you have a source for this claim?
As I understand it, this is flatly untrue. Jails were, up until quite recently, designed to hold people awaiting trial, not as punishment.
My belief is that imprisonment for decades as punishment is a 20th century phenomenon.
The only book I've read on this specific matter is "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault, but that was a decade ago; I'm not sure if the details are crisp in my mind.
I can't say that I've researched the history of crime and punishment over the centuries and how imprisonment fits into that. Though I was intending to refer to more recent history, somewhere from around the founding of America to the beginning of modern-era widespread policing.
If you've read anything on it, exactly what were they using for punishment then? Other things I've read of in various places include execution, the stocks, other forms of physical punishments. IIRC, some Islamic societies still recommend cutting the hands off of thieves. All of this stuff makes imprisonment seem rather sanitary and lenient by comparison.
But one of the points in the Foucault book jMyles mentioned is that the leniency of imprisonment didn't come about because we're somehow morally superior than earlier societies, it's because it's the most efficient way so far devised for the state to exert its power over a human body.
Do you have a source for this claim?
As I understand it, this is flatly untrue. Jails were, up until quite recently, designed to hold people awaiting trial, not as punishment.
My belief is that imprisonment for decades as punishment is a 20th century phenomenon.
The only book I've read on this specific matter is "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault, but that was a decade ago; I'm not sure if the details are crisp in my mind.