Notorious Prisons of the World

A captivating history of doing time throughout the centuries: from England's medieval dungeons to America's supermax detention facilities.

The first prisons were castle hellholes, places of neglect, oblivion, and slow death. Every civilization has had its dissenters, deviants, and political offenders, and so prisons became essential to the retention of power. As the centuries passed, and prisons were needed for other reprobates-such as debtors and common thieves-legal systems across the w...