Improved police surveillance in 1830s Egypt drastically reduced public executions.

Evidence

In Egypt, the change in the aims and purposes of punishment and of the meaning of discipline in general is probably best represented by two things, the decline in the number of public executions and the developments in the new connotations of the word siyaset. Dr. Bowring, who visited Egypt in the late 1830s, said that as a result of the more efficient police surveillance in Cairo and in Egypt in general the number of public executions had been brought down to a trickle. “I have little to do now,” the public executioner told him. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 706