As entertaining as it is informative, this book explores the
history of incarceration in the British Isles from Anglo-Saxon
times to the present day. Shades of the Prison House explores the
history of imprisonment in the British Isles from Anglo-Saxon times
to the present day. Over the centuries, prisons - from castle
dungeons to "lockups" to "penitentiaries" to gaols -have changed
radically in name, conditions, attributes and functions, as well as
in their character and rationale. Prisons have served many aims:
detention, deterrence, punishment, reformation and rehabilitation,
all in varying degrees. Yet while prisons and their purposes have
been transformed, the same debates on imprisonment have continually
recurred. Concerns about overcrowding and over-pampering, security
and safety have been expressed from the very beginning, and modern
notions that prison might serve a purpose other than containment or
punishment were espoused long before the eighteenth century.
Drawing on letters, treatises, personal accounts, histories, legal
and official reports and studies of prison architecture and design,
this book tells the story of prisons, prison life and those who
experienced it, be they prisoners, governors, chaplains, warders,
reformers or advocates. As entertainingas it is informative, the
book examines the nature and quality of imprisonment over the last
fifteen hundred years, before surveying present problems and
concluding with thoughts on future directions. HARRY POTTER is a
former fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge and a practising
barrister specialising in criminal defence. Author of Law, Liberty
and the Constitution: A Brief History of the Common Law (Boydell
Press, 2015), he wrote and presented an award-winning series on the
same subject for the BBC. He has also authored Edinburgh under
Siege: 1571-1573 (2003), Blood Feud: The Stewarts and Gordons at
War in the Age of Mary Queen of Scots (2002), Hanging and Heresy
(1994) and Hanging in Judgment: Religion and the Death Penalty in
England from the Bloody Code to Abolition (1993). Before being
called to the Bar, he worked as a prison chaplain, largely with
long-termand life-sentence prisoners.
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