The eighteenth-century novel helped produce the penitentiary

Evidence

Bender thus sees a kinship between two major developments of the eighteenth century—the rise of the novel in the cultural sphere and the rise of the penitentiary in the socio-legal sphere. If the novel as a cultural form helped to produce the penitentiary, then prison reformers must have been influenced by the ideas generated by and through the eighteenth-century novel. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 140

Categorization

• QUESTION: A provocative cultural thesis: is there evidence the novel actually changed penal policy, or is this analogy?
• XREF: connects to: Reform has been built into the prison since its origin

Related

• The penitentiary was framed as a progressive reform of its era. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Reform has been built into the prison since its origin #expands (0.60)