The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society.

As the title suggests this book really deals with two questions, the history of the prison and the history of punishment. The idea of ridding society of deviant or dangerous members is presumably as old as civilization but the predominance of imprisonment, i.e. incarceration in a structured institution for a determined length of time, is a relatively new development. In the introduction the editors point out that removal might be achieved by "capital punishment, by exile or transportation." Their question is, "Why opt for the prison? Why invest in cells and walls?" (p. xi) The obvious answer would seem to be that capital punishment has increasingly been seen as morally abhorrent and that uninhabited settings for exile and transportation are no longer available.

This argument leaves Rothman unconvinced. "Why invent a system of incarceration, why substitute confinement in segregated spaces. . . . Why channel the impulse to do good into creating something as strange as the prison, a system, that can still prompt an inmate to want to meet the man who dreamed it all up, convinced that he must have been born on Mars?" (p. 128) While it could certainly be argued that a great many prisoners are not actually threats to their fellow citizens, it does seem reasonable to assume that for most of those fellow citizens, the justification for prisons is to keep the criminals off the streets. This is not to say that there are not significant changes and developments in the history of prisons or that the current system is flawless, simply that the urge to lock up those who are perceived as dangerous is not particularly strange. Though the introduction lists four main purposes for prisons - incapacitation, deterrence, retribution and reformation - the essays that follow largely ignore the first concern, i.e. the protection of society.

Prisons as holding facilities for those accused or convicted of crimes as well as for debtors and others deemed undesirable are not new. However, in the late eighteenth century reformers began to question how these holding places might be made more orderly, humane, productive and efficient. Prison reform seems largely to have been geared to molding the prisoners into better citizens. A reasonable goal since most prisoners will one day be released. But the hope for reformation has been stymied by concerns about equity towards those who have not been convicted of crimes, by financial issues and at least in part by the fact that the sources of much criminal behavior seem to be too deeply rooted to be remedied in adult life. The problems and consequences of such complications are analyzed brilliantly in Sean McConville's essays on Victorian prisons and local jails.

As with any collection of essays, especially with such an encyclopedic topic, this book is very uneven. Some of the contributors simply try to provide basic information, others take a more analytic approach while a few appear as polemicists. In Part I, "Prisons in History," the essays are in chronological order. Edward Peters looks at ancient and medieval prisons. Pieter Spierenburg then raises some very interesting points about punishment and confinement in early modem Europe. He suggests that despite the ghastly examples that are so well-known, the use of physical cruelty as punishment was relatively rare. Randall McGowan, David Rothman, Sean McConville and Edgardo Rotman contribute parallel essays on prisons in England and the U.S. for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and Patricia O'Brien does an overview of prisons on the European continent since 1865. All of these essays demonstrate that despite the best of intentions, the ideals of the eighteenth-century reformers are no closer to fulfillment than they were two centuries ago. Finally Norval Morris writes a fascinating and sobering account of prisons in the contemporary U.S.

Part II includes an essay by John Hirst on the surprisingly successful experiences of the Australian convict colony, one by Lucia Zedner on prisons for women and a very interesting piece by Steven Schlossman on the development of juvenile reform schools. The final two essays are Aryeh Neier on political prisons and W. B. Carnochan on prison literature. Both are interesting though they only peripherally connect to the rest of the essays.

The editors suggest that for practical reasons they had to limit their focus. But even given these reasonable constraints the book seems incomplete as there is no concluding essay to tie together the disparate assumptions and conclusions of the various authors. While the reader should certainly be left to ponder, it would be very helpful if at least some of the connections and differences among the periods and the regions studied were spelled out more clearly. In what directions the ideas and influences flowed is never really considered despite chronological parallels. This lack of cohesion is compounded by the very inadequate index.

Further, while the editors insist the book is about prisons and how they were run rather than how their residents were chosen, one surely must consider the fact that prisons all over, but especially those in the United States, have seen rehabilitative programs shattered as a result of severe overcrowding in the late twentieth century. The prison population has increased at a rate many times that of the general population. Why at the end of the late twentieth century do we feel the need to incarcerate such a large proportion of our population? Which of the four purposes of the prison are being reflected here? Who are these new prisoners and how are they affecting prison design and management? But these and other questions must be left to those who, in the words of the editors, "will take the story in new directions." (p. xiv)

Carolyn A. Conley University of Alabama at Birmingham