ABSTRACT
Prisons were devised only 200 years ago as a substitute for harsher punishments. True, dungeons existed for at least 1,000 years to incarcerate persons whom ruling monarchies perceived as troublesome. However, dungeons were not prisons, and jails aren’t prisons either. Accused people were detained in jails to ensure their presence at trials, as were debtors to make them pay up. But the idea of deprivation of freedom as punishment for violators of serious rules did not attract support until Benjamin Franklin’s time (Toby 1986 cited in Gottfredson and Goldkamp 1990: 128).
