Discuss the history of punishment, including a discussion of the rise of prisons

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The punishment and correction of criminals has changed considerably through the ages, reflecting custom, economic conditions, and religious and political ideals. In early Greece and Rome, the most common state-administered punishment was banishment or exile. During the Middle Ages there was little law or governmental control and offenses often sparked blood feuds and vendetta's carried out by families or the injured parties. The development of the common law in the eleventh century brought some standardization to penal practice but corrections remained an amalgam of fines and corporal or brutal physical punishments. By the end of the sixteenth century, punishment of criminals shifted to meet the demands of overseas colonization where offenders were forced to do hard labor for their crimes instead of being tortured or executed. Houses of correction were developed to make it convenient to assign petty law violators to work details. This time period also included transportation of felons to North America. As the criminal population grew into the latter part of the eighteenth century, prisoners were housed in abandoned ships anchored in rivers and harbors. By 1820 incarceration in walled institutions called reformatories or penitentiaries replaced physical punishment. Today our primary methods of punishment for serious and chronic offenders are those walled institutions and reformatories that are categorized by custody and security level into jails and prisons.