CHAPTER 2
The Early History of Correctional Thought and Practice
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
1. Describe the major forms of punishment from the Middle Ages to the American
Revolution.
3. Identify the contribution of Cesare Beccaria and the classical school.
5. Discuss the work of John Howard and its influence on correctional reform.
LESSON PLAN
Correlated to PowerPoints
I. From the Middle Ages to the American Revolution
Learning Objective 1: Describe the major forms of punishment from the Middle Ages to the
American Revolution.
1. The Code of Hammurabi, the Sumerian Law of Mesopotamia, and other
2. These documents covered different types of offenses and descriptions of
punishment imposed on accused individuals.
4. Lex talionis was the law of retaliation and underlay the laws of Anglo-Saxon
society until the time of the Norman conquest in 1066 in England.
5. Secular law developed in England and Europe in the absence of an organized
6. In the year 1200, England developed a system of wergild, or payment of
7. The main emphasis of criminal law was on maintaining public order among
people of equal status and wealth; the main criminal punishments were
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8. The church, the dominant social institution of the time, maintained
ecclesiastical punishments; benefit of clergy was eventually granted to all
literate persons.
A. Galley Slavery
1. The practice of forcing men to power ships by rowing; it was not formally
abolished in Europe until the mid-1700s.
B. Imprisonment
2. House of correction concept was born during this time.
3. Bridewell House—Houses of Correction, Milan House of Correction, Maison
de Force.
C. Transportation
2. English incarcerated individuals could choose transportation instead of gallows
or whipping posts; by 1606 with the settlement of Virginia, the transportation
3. Transportation was so successful that, in 1717, a statute was passed allowing
4. The Transportation Act of 1718 made transportation the standard penalty for
noncapital offenses.
5. From 1787 for the next 80 years, 160,000 incarcerated individuals were
transported from Great Britain and Ireland to New South Wales and other parts
of Australia.
D. Corporal Punishment and Death
1. Although corporal punishment and death have been used throughout history,
2. The reasons for the rise in the severity of punishments are thought to reflect the
expansion of criminal law. The number of crimes for which the English
authorized the death penalty swelled from 50 in 1688 to 160 in 1765 and
reached 225 by 1800.
Media Tool
Visit http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Punishment.jsp
o Punishments at the Old Bailey: Information about England’s methods of execution from
the late 1600s
o Discuss as a class. How did these methods of execution aid correctional goals at that
time?
Chapter 2: The Early History of Correctional Thought and Practice
Class Discussion/Activity
Discuss varying methods of punishment here in the United States. Split the class into two groups,
and debate the death penalty regardless of students’ personal opinions. Allow for an open
discussion in class.
What If Scenario
What if all states were using corporal forms of punishment? What would our society be like in
terms of criminal activity based on this lex talionis concept?
II. On the Eve of Reform
A. By the middle of the eighteenth century, economic and social factors (particularly
with regard to labor), altered political relationships, changes in the power of the
church, and the organization of secular authority combined with revolution in the
American colonies, liberal ideas about the relationship between citizen and
government, and a belief in human perfectibility set the stage for a shift in penal
policies.
B. Because each of these forces was in place by 1770, it is arbitrarily designated as
the eve of a crucial period of correctional reform on both sides of the Atlantic.
III. The Enlightenment and Correctional Reform
Learning Objective 2: Discuss the Enlightenment and how it affected corrections.
1. During the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason
2. Advances in scientific thinking led to a questioning attitude that emphasized
observation, experimentation, and technological development.
4. In the eighteenth century, people in England and America and on the European
5. They began to reconsider how criminal law should be administered and how to
redefine the goals and practices of corrections.
See Assignment 1
A. Cesare Beccaria and the Classical School
Learning Objective 3: Identify the contribution of Cesare Beccaria and the classical
school.
1. Cesare Beccaria and the classical school put forth the idea that the true aim and
only justification for punishment is utility: the safety it affords society by
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© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or
in part.
preventing crime. This perspective was particularly concerned with
establishing a rational link between the gravity of a crime and the severity of
punishment.
2. Principles of classical criminology:
a. Greatest good for greatest number of people.
b. Crime is an injury to society
c. Prevention of crime is more important than punishment for crime.
d. Secret accusations and torture must be abolished.
e. Punishment is crime deterrence.
f. Imprisonment should be more widely employed.
Media Tool
Visit http://www.iep.utm.edu/beccaria/
o Cesare Beccaria: Visit this site and discuss more about the thinking of Beccaria.
o Discuss as a class. How can Cesare Beccaria’s thinking be seen in today’s corrections?
What If Scenario
What if we began using the concepts and processes of Beccaria’s classical school of thought?
How would our society change?
B. Jeremy Bentham and the “Hedonic Calculus”
Learning Objective 4: Explain the contribution of Jeremy Bentham and the utilitarians.
1. Bentham was one of the most provocative thinkers and reformers of English
2. According to Bentham, rational persons behave in ways that achieve the most
3. Bentham developed plans for a penitentiary based on his utilitarian principles
called the Panoptican, or “inspection house.”
Media Tool
Visit http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/bentham.html
o Jeremy Bentham
o Discuss as a class. How did Bentham contribute to society? Split the class into groups
and debate his ways of thinking.
Class Discussion/Activity
Group students into clusters of three or four. Assign each cluster a crime. Have the students
create a “hedonistic calculus” whereby they list the pleasures and pains that the crime could
bring. Remind students to include non-tangible consequences. Discuss this in class.
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Chapter 2: The Early History of Correctional Thought and Practice
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See Assignment 2
C. John Howard and the Birth of the Penitentiary
Learning Objective 5: Discuss the work of John Howard and its influence on
correctional reform.
2. Along with Sir William Blackstone and William Eden, Howard drafted the
3. The twofold purpose of the penitentiary was to punish and to reform convicted
individuals through solitary confinement between intervals of work, the
inculcation of good habits, and religious instruction so that incarcerated
individuals could reflect on their moral duties.
Class Discussion/Activity
Divide the class into three groups. Each group will research Jeremy Bentham, Cesare Beccaria,
or John Howard. Each group will then defend the works, research, and studies of this particular
person. The group will present their findings to the rest of the class and a debate will begin based
on this information.
See Assignment 3
IV. What Really Motivated Correctional Reform?
A. Reform was brought about as much by the emergence of the middle class as by the
humanistic concerns of the Quakers and individuals like Bentham and Howard.
B. New industrialists may have been concerned about the existing criminal law because
its harshness was helping some accused individuals escape punishment.
What If Scenario
What if you committed a robbery back in the Middle Ages? How would you be treated?
Compare this to committing a robbery today.
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Class Discussion/Activity
Divide your class into discussion groups of four to five students. Ask them to identify the critical
political, social, economic, and global forces that are serving to define correctional philosophy in
the twenty-first century in the United States. How do these compare with those forces prior to the
Enlightenment? After the Enlightenment? Should these forces influence policy in the manner in
which they do? Why or why not?
LECTURE NOTES
This chapter maps out the early history of correctional thought and practice. It is important for
students to understand that the system we have today developed in relationship to a variety of
ideological, social, and political ideas. In the grand scheme of things, our system is relatively
new. Ideas and practices revolving around crime and punishment have been a part of human life
for ages.
The chapter first reviews the major forms of punishment from the Middle Ages to the American
Revolution. It may be useful to create a timeline with students to illustrate the evolution or
When teaching about the evolution of penal ideas and practices, it is important to remind
students of the sociopolitical backdrop. You can use England as an example, noting that
economic and social forces such as labor began to reshape the nature of penal sanctions. So too is
the case in the American colonies, where liberal ideas about the relationship between citizens
and governments helped set the stage for a shift in penal policies.
This chapter introduces the Enlightenment. It is vital that students understand what this
movement was about and just how powerful an agent of change it was. It may be useful to
contrast the ideas of the Dark Ages with those of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment gave us
liberalism, rationality, science, equality, and individualism. Students should be made aware of
Chapter 2: The Early History of Correctional Thought and Practice
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© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or
in part.
philosopher who described the hedonistic calculus framework through which people decided
how to act; and John Howard, a sheriff and determined reformer who demanded dramatic
changes that paved the way for the penitentiary.
KEY TERMS
Lex talionis
Law of retaliation; the principle that punishment should correspond in degree and kind to the
offense (“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”).
Secular law
The law of the civil society, as distinguished from church law.
Wergild
“Man money”“—money paid to relatives of a murdered person or to the victim of a crime to
compensate them and to prevent a blood feud.
Benefit of clergy
The right to be tried in an ecclesiastical court, where punishments were less severe than those
meted out by civil courts, given the religious focus on penance and salvation.
Hulks
Abandoned ships the English converted to hold convicts during a period of prison crowding
between 1776 and 1790.
Corporal punishment
Punishment inflicted on the incarcerated person’s body with whips or other devices that cause
pain.
Instructor’s Manual
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The Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason
A cultural movement in England and France during the 1700s, when concepts of liberalism,
rationality, equality, and individualism dominated social and political thinking.
ASSIGNMENTS
1. Have students summarize the social, political, and scientific ideas advocated during the
2. To aid understanding of Bentham’s hedonic calculus, ask students if they are willing to
influence their first exam grade by successfully completing a task (e.g., shooting
crumpled paper into a trash can, making a paper airplane that will fly the length of the
classroom). Specifically, tell students that if they successfully complete the task they will
receive an A on their first exam. Students may ask what will happen if they do not
successfully complete the task. Respond by saying that nothing will happen if they are
unsuccessful. Again ask if they are willing to participate in this wager. Next, before any
3. Have students conduct research on various states’ departments of corrections to read their
official policy, mission, and goal statements. Compare and contrast these with the ideas
Chapter 2: The Early History of Correctional Thought and Practice
ANSWERS TO END-OF-CHAPTER DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Although the answers provided below will vary from student to student, the responses should
include at a minimum a discussion of the following key points.
1. In what ways have changes in social, economic, and political environment of society
been reflected in correctional policies?
2. How do you suppose that the developments discussed in this chapter eventually brought
about the separation of children from others in the prison system?
3. How have the interests of administrators and the organizations they manage distorted the
ideals of penal reformers?
4. Some people believe the history of corrections shows a continuous movement toward
more humane treatment of incarcerated people as society in general has progressed. Do
you agree? Why or why not?
5. How many specific underlying social factors have influenced the development of
correctional philosophies?