Prisons are a liberal idea which only work in a conservative country. If you don’t have strong moral rules, strong families and tough authority figures everywhere, from fathers to schoolmasters, park keepers and bus conductors to large, fierce constables patrolling the towns, prison will not do any good.
The idea of keeping someone locked in a room for several years, as punishment, is really quite new, and a bit of an experiment.
Before about 1800, we tended to transport criminals to distant colonies, or to hang them till they died. There were prisons, but they were just diseased dungeons where criminals were
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