Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

By Michel Foucault. Translated by AlanSheridan.

From Chapter 1, Torture. “We have, then, a public execution and a time-table. They do not punish the same crimes or the same type of delinquent. But they each define a certain penal style. Less than a century separates them. It was a time when, in Europe and in the United States,the entire economy of punishment was redistributed. It was a time of great 'scandals'for traditional justice, a time of innumerable projects for reform. It saw a new theory of law and crime, a new rnoral or political justification of the right to punish; old laws were abolished, old customs died out. 'Modern' codes were planned or drawn up: Russia, 1769; Prussia, 1780; Pennsylvania and Tuscany, 1786; Austria, 1788; France 1791 Year IV, 1808 and 1810. It wasa new age for pena justice…..Among so many changes, I shall consider one:the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle…”

Vintage Random House. (1977). 1995.353p.