The Rise of the Penitentiary Prisons and Punishment in Early America

by Adam Jay Hirsch

Before the nineteenth century, American prisons were used to hold people for trial and not to incarcerate them for wrong-doing. Only after independence did American states begin to reject such public punishment as whipping and pillorying and turn to imprisonment instead. In this legal, social, and political history, Adam J. Hirsch explores the reasons behind this change. Hirsch draws on evidence from throughout the early Republic and examines European...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300042973
• ISBN13: 9780300042979
• Release Date: June 1992
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"