Slavery and the penal system

Beskrivning:

The author, renowned throughout the world as the distinguished criminologist. traces the direct and indirect influences of the social institution of chattel slavery on the evolution of penal systems and practices in Europé and the United States —a dismal story. Professor Sellin reveals the darkest and most brutal aspects of penal history and the social forces that resisted or nullified the efforts of reformers who sought to bring about the humanization of punishment.

Slavery and the Penal System shows that domestic punishments, inflicted on slaves by their masters, later became legal punishments for the crimes committed by low-class freemen—eventually to become legal punishments for offenders, regardless of social status. A dominant force in this development is the caste and class structure of society that is reflected in the determination of what conduct should be defined as criminal; who should be punished: and what the punishment should be. Criminologist Sellin gives an account of slavery and punishment in ancient Greece and Rome and in the medieval Germanic states; galley slaves in maritime countries; penal slavery on public works (fortifications); the rise of houses of correction; the naval arsenal prisons in France, Spain. and Italy; the British "hulks" (and the penal servitude that replaced them); penal slavery in Russia; slavery and punishment in the antebellum South, with its convict lease system, chain gangs, penal farms and plantations.

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