ABSTRACT
Incarceration in its various forms has been part of human penal systems since the development of warfare. Biblical records document conquering Roman armies led by General Titus who, in ad 70, killed thousands of Jews, imprisoned and subsequently sold hundreds of thousands of war prisoners into slavery in Egypt. Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire incarcerated defeated opponents in dungeons during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Slave plantations constituted virtual prisons, as were harems populated with captured women during the Ottoman era. 1 , 2 Contrary to a widely held belief that modern prisons evolved following the Protestant revolution and the rise of post-Renaissance nation states in the seventeenth century, Geltner’s archival study of penal systems in fourteenth century Florence and Venice showed a much earlier and southern European origin. 3 He argued that many core features of the modern prisons – including administration, finance and the classification of inmates – were already developed by the end of the fourteenth century, and that incarceration as a formal punishment was far more widespread from this period onwards. It is plausible that Italian cities pioneered modern prison systems because of the Catholic Church’s open advocacy for prisons to replace floggings and executions as punishment from the late thirteenth century onwards. By the mid-fifteenth century, prisons had become more widely used as a punishment option in Italian provinces, and were constructed as permanent government institutions in city centres, staffed with wardens and prison guards employed by the state. Italy’s medieval prisons were divided into sections according to sex and social class, with new areas added later for the infirm and the insane. The social structures of the city-s tates were more or less retained within the prison walls.
