The Prison before the Panopticon: Incarceration in Ancient and Modern Political Philosophy

A pioneering history of incarceration in Western political thought.

The prison as we know it is a relatively new institution, established on a large scale in Europe and the United States only during the Enlightenment. Ideas and arguments about penal incarceration, however, long predate its widespread acceptance as a practice. The Prison before the Panopticon argues that debates over imprisonment are as old as Western political philosophy itself. This groundbreaking study examines the role of...