ABSTRACT
The social, intellectual, and economic changes that differentiated the states of the new republic from the several colonies prompted a critical reappraisal and revision of the ideas and techniques of social control. Under the influence of demographic, economic and intellectual developments, they perceived that the traditional mechanisms of social control were obsolete. The treatise, On Crimes and Punishments, first appeared in 1764 and was already being quoted by John Adams as early as 1770 in defense of the British soldiers implicated in the Boston Massacre. "They are driven to commit additional crimes to avoid the punishment for a single one. Prisons matched punishment to crime precisely: the more heinous the offense, the longer the sentence. The faith of the 1790's seemed misplaced; more rational codes had not decreased crime. Legislators, no less interested in a theory for crime, prepared to amend the statutes and appropriate the funds for a new system.
