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🪵 The Threshold

Late-nineteenth-century penal reforms shifted punishment from the offense to the offender

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tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@friedman_history_2005, loc. 3417

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Late-nineteenth-century penal reforms shifted punishment from the offense to the offender

Evidence

Probation was an alternative to prison. The key notion was to examine the life of a man or women convicted of crime, with a view to deciding whether the human material was sound enough to deserve another chance. It focused, in short, on the offender, rather than simply on the offense. Punishment was to fit the criminal, and not only the crime. The same ethos underlay a number of other reforms: the suspended sentence, indeterminate sentence, and parole. These served, too, as more professionalized substitutes for that older method of grace, the pardoning power of the governor. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3417

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century vice laws against adultery went largely unenforced in practice — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 817; Penal reform shifted punishment from the act to the offender’s character — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 160; Reformers shifted punishment’s aim from expiation to prevention — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 204 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

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