Introduction

Debtors’ prisons have received little scholarly interest and been treated generally as an antiquated form of cruelty, which was inevitably dismissed by the rise of economic rationalism and capitalism. Those unlucky enough to be confined within them have been viewed as victims, assumed to be impoverished, and it is assumed their only chance of leaving prison was after death. However, as the resurgence of the modern debtors’ prison in twenty-first-century America has shown, those owed debts in highly varied economies across time have seen value in being able to force payment through confinement. This chapter discusses the significant role of debtors’ prisons through a conceptual discussion of the necessity of market regulation during the era of the Industrial Revolution. Having set out the book’s approach in relation to the controversial contribution of institutional economics and detailed a short history of the six centuries of English debtors’ prisons, it summarises the key assertions of the effective functioning of debt imprisonment set out in the book as a whole.