By the Unlock the Box Campaign

There is a growing movement across the United States to end or restrict solitary confinement and to employ alternative interventions that improve safety and well-being. Fueling this surge in efforts at ending solitary is a recognition that solitary confinement is a form of torture. It inflicts terrible suffering and injury—physical, psychological, emotional, and social—on individuals who have experienced it or are currently subjected to it and has severe effects on their loved ones and on the wider community. This horrific practice is in extensive use across the country, damaging or destroying untold lives. Deeply disturbed by this reality, an increasing number of campaigns led by people who have survived solitary confinement and those with loved ones in solitary now or in the past have helped spur legislative and administrative policy changes to curb the use of solitary and to promote alternatives. Between 2009 and 2022, in 45 states, 886 bills were introduced to restrict or end solitary confinement in some form; 40 states have passed at least one of these bills. In 2021 alone, 153 pieces of legislation were filed across 37 states to regulate some aspect of solitary confinement, the vast majority seeking to end at least some aspect of the practice in state prisons and jails, youth facilities, and other carceral settings. An additional 74 bills were introduced in 2022, and 16 bills were passed in 2022, namely, in New York, Kentucky, Illinois, Connecticut, Louisiana, Virginia, Hawaii, Colorado, and Maryland, with additional bills to be acted on, as of the writing of this report. Anti-solitary efforts have also contributed to the closure of entire prisons, buildings, and units used to inflict solitary, most recently with the closure of supermax prisons in New York and Connecticut

Unlock the Box Campaign, 2023. 64p.

By William Haller

From the Preface. My intention in these pages is to offer an account of the usually referred to as The Book of Martyrs, in what I conceive to be the context of its own time. The account is based primanly on a study of that book in the successive versions and editions published by the author in his lifetime and of the relevant contemporary literature ofProtestant edification and propaganda. Foxe published two preliminary versions of his book on the Continent in 1554 and 1559, the first English version in 1563. A much revised and greatly enlarged version in 1570, and two editions in 1576 and 138g with some further revisions and additions but no significant changes. In the century after his death five more editions, based on the text of 1583, appeared in 1596, 1610, 1631-2, 1641 and 1684. The same text, slightly bowdlerized and at certain points somewhat awkwardly conflated with the text of 1563, was again reproduced in an edition in eight volumes issued by S.R. Cattley in 1837, later revised by Josiah Pratt,and reissued with pagination unchangedi 1843-9, 1870 and 1877. Quotations from the book in the following pages correspond to the text as it appearsin the Cattley-Pratt edition, corrected as may be necessary according to theoriginal. Spelling and punctuation have been regulated according to present usage. Of the numerous other editions or versions of Foxe's book published subsequentlyto 1684. I have examined a considerable number but not all, and have found none to be complete and many to be grossly corrupt. Most of the stories ofthe Marian martyrs appeared for the first time in print in the pages of Foxe's book, but some were published separately on the Continent during Mary’s reign…”

London. Bayler and Son. 1963. 275p.

By Thielman J. von Braght. Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

From the introduction: It is difficult to go one better than Foxe’s Book of Martyrs of the 17th century that contains endless illustrations of the dreadful tortures and deaths inflicted on the Christian martyrs. The book was so popular that it went through at least three editions in Foxe’s lifetime. Since then, various authors have reproduced aspects of Foxe’s classic, interspersed with some new prints and illustrations,  This book, compiled by Mennonites for Mennonites,  is one such book. The descriptions of the martyrs and their lives and deaths do become tiresome to the secular reader, and the lessons their editors presume to convey – those of the moral superiority, chastity and devotion to their faith – focus on the tenets of Christianity of course, but fail to make any attempt at under­standing the details, procedures, and choices of the tortures and horrible deaths inflicted upon the martyrs by their brutal captors.

Prepared by W. Grinton Berry

The Actes and Monuments (full title: Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church), popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, is a work of Protestant history and martyrology by Protestant English historian John Foxe, first published in 1563 by John Day. It includes a polemical account of the sufferings of Protestants under the Catholic Church, with particular emphasis on England and Scotland. The book was highly influential in those countries and helped shape lasting popular notions of Catholicism there. The book went through four editions in Foxe's lifetime and a number of later editions and abridgements, including some that specifically reduced the text to a Book of Martyrs. (Wikipedia)

London John Day 1563. NY. Abingdon Press. 1913. 413p.

By Robert Hughes

(Mr Hughes) has felt his way back into the past with passion and insight, mined an enormous mass of material and welded the results of his researches into a commanding narrative... Already widely known as an art critic, he now reveals his formidable gifts as a social htstonan "           —The New York Times

'Although The Fatal Shore is both lengthy and scholarly, it is alio fun to read One of Hughes's greatest gifts as a joumalist has always been his ability to express senous themes in accessible language. In his marvelous new history, he brings convict Australia to life both in his own words and those of its inhabitants……The idiosyncratic voices of the individual convicts he quotes imbue the narrative with the spark and savor of real life in all its chaotic, intimate detail. This kind of history is as exciting and entertaining as a good novel.” — Chicago Sun-Times

NY. Vintage. 1988. 743p.

By C. Geltner

From the cover: Corporal punishment is often seen as a litmus test for a society’s degree of civilization. Its licit use purports to separate modernity from premodernity, enlightened from barbaric cultures. As Geltner argues, however, neither did the infliction of bodily pain typify earlier societies nor did it vanish from penal theory, policy, or practice. Far from displaying a steady decline that accelerated with die Enlightenment, physical punishment was contested throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, its application expanding and contracting under diverse pressures. Moreover, despite the integration of penal incarceration into criminal justice systems since the nineteenth century, modem nation states and colonial regimes increased rather than limited the use of corporal punishment. Flogging Others thus challenges a common understanding of modernization and Western identity and underscores earlier civilizations' nuanced approaches to punishment, deviance, and the human body. Today as in the past, corporal punishment thrives due to its capacity to define otherness efficiently and unambiguously, either as a measure acting upon a deviant's body or as a practice that epitonuzes — in the eyes of external observers — a culture's backwardness.

Amsterdam. Amsterdam University Press. 2014. 110p.

By Amir Whitaker and Daniel J. Losen

Students of color in this country far too often face barriers to receiving quality public education – from unequal resources in schools, to overly punitive discipline administered more often to children of color. As the nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization, for more than a century, the NAACP has worked to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all persons and to eliminate racebased discrimination. Equal access to public education and eliminating the severe racial inequities that continue to plague our education system is at the core of our mission. This new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies brings new light to the practice of corporal punishment in schools. When an educator strikes a student in school, it can have a devastating impact on the child’s opportunity to learn in a safe, healthy, and welcoming environment. This is dangerous for all students, but corporal punishment is administered disproportionately to students of color in our nation’s public schools

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Rights Center and Los Angeles: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, 2019. 41p.

By Katherine Culliton-González, et al.

For this report, the Commission investigated school discipline practices and policies impacting students of color with disabilities and the possible connections to the school-to-prison pipeline, examined rates of exclusionary discipline, researched whether and under what circumstances school discipline policies unfairly and/or unlawfully target students of color with disabilities, and analyzed the federal government’s responses and actions on the topic.

Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2017. 224p.

By Sarah Tarlow.

”The story of Tom Otter, a murderer who was executed and gibbeted in 1806, has many striking features. Not least, this form of brutal and bodily post-mortem punishment seems rather anachronistic during a period often described in terms of increasing gentility and humanity. It took place within the legal context of the Murder Act (1752), which specified that the bodies of murderers had to be either dissected or hung in chains. Other aggravated death penalties were applied to those convicted of treason and suicide. A number of common misconceptions about the gibbet need to be corrected.” Palgrave (2017) 163p.

By Alice Morse Earle.

A brief and somewhat sensational review of typical punishments of the middle ages with illustrations of each..

Chicago. Stone (1896) 173p.

By G. Geltner.

Corporal Punishment and Cultural Identity from Antiquity to the Present.“Corporal punishment is an evocative, almost self-explanatory term. But like other concepts with powerful and immediate connotations, it is poorly understood and rarely interrogated. Outside academia, and often within it, corporal punishment is the subject of simplistic analyses and misinformed expositions. The concept itself is ill-defined, its comparative history (as traced by historians of punishment) neglected, and there is little insight into its functions and meaning in a given cultural context,”

Amsterdam University Press (2014) 113p.

By Owen Davies and Francesca Matteoni.

Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine. This book explores the magical and medical history of executions from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century by looking at the afterlife potency of criminal corpses, the healing activities of the executioner, and the magic of the gallows site. The use of corpses in medicine and magic has been recorded back into antiquity. The lacerated bodies of Roman gladiators were used as a source of curative blood, for instance. In early modern Europe, a great trade opened up in ancient Egyptian mummies and the fat of executed criminals, plundered as medicinal cure-alls. However, this is the first book to consider the demand for the blood of the executed, the desire for human fat, the resort to the hanged man’s hand, and the trade in hanging rope in the modern era. It ends by look at the spiritual afterlife of dead criminals.

Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife. (2017) 122 pages.

By Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

Lynch Law in All Its Phases. “The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are of minor importance.”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1892, 1893, 1894) 33 pages.

By Graeme Newman, Translated by by Kyung-Jae.

Translation of the classic The Punishment Response into Korean by Kyung-Jae. Contains color illustrations and other small additions appropriate for a Korean audience.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 2019. 434p.

By Graeme R. Newman

Not everyone will agree with this book. Some will say it is a case for torture. It is not. But everyone who reads it, especially those concerned that today's longer, tougher sentences are turning the U.S. into an "inmate nation"-will be forced to rethink exactly what we mean by punishment. And justice. This book Is for everyone outraged by crime-and by the chaos of our criminal justice system. Why, Graeme Newman asks, has reform after reform failed to halt the spread of crime? How can we demand long, mandatory sentences when voters refuse to spend the money to build more and bigger prisons? Does anyone know what to do with those who break the law? An exciting sequel “Civilization and Barbarism: Punishing Criminals in the 20th Century” published by SUNY Press, takes the argument way beyond anything before.

Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2021. 166p.