Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T10:03:07.093Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - The History of Ideas and Its Significance for the Prison System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2013

Norbert Finzsch
Affiliation:
Universität Hamburg
Robert Jütte
Affiliation:
Universität Hamburg
Get access

Summary

The prison situation at the end of the eighteenth century can best be described by a quotation from Albrecht Heinrich von Arnim, the Prussian minister of justice:

Most penal institutions are linked with orphanages, homes and mental hospitals; the different classes of inmates are hardly ever separated; the buildings are not safe and sturdy enough, which means that escapes are very common; the administrative staff is too small and inappropriate.... No consideration whatsoever is shown for health care, hygiene, or discipline, neither in the penal institutions nor in the jails. In the Küstrin town jail there is a lack of daylight and fresh air; in the Danzig casemates, water runs down the walls all the time, and the rooms cannot be heated.... The Elbing jail consists of a ten-square-foot vault, eight feet deep ... the floor is made of a mound of rubble and rubbish ... and within it there were four people, including a man accused of stealing a horse, a fourteen- to sixteen-year-old boy and a maid who had to sit behind bars for another week owing to a misdemeanor against her master and mistress.... Even in penal institutions, due attention is not paid to the separation of the sexes: pregnancies are by no means rare, childbirths are kept secret, the murdering of newborn babies is a fact. In addition to this lack of discipline, the inmates were treated extremely roughly: as a rule, they were tied up, flogged, and otherwise abused.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, different types of penal institutions existed in the territory of the German states. There were prisons for punishing convicted criminals and prisons for the detention of suspects and persons accused of crimes. These institutions endeavored to deprive the detainees of their liberty and not to inflict physical pain. Of necessity, however, inmates had to be restrained by chains, and they often had to suffer the indignities of dungeon fever.

Type
Chapter
Information
Institutions of Confinement
Hospitals, Asylums, and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500–1950
, pp. 175 - 190
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×