Richard W Ireland – författare

Major changes took place in the nineteenth century regarding the practice of punishment of criminals, as older measures of a capital and corporal nature gave way to the dominance of prison as a penal measure. Increasingly crime came to be presented as a national rather than a local problem, meriting a national solution. By investigating in detail the operation of Carmarthen Gaol in the period c.1840-1877, this book explores the reasons for and resistances to these general trends, and for the first time provides an account of the relationship between a local gaol, its staff and its prisoners, and the community in which it was situated. The result challenges traditional accounts of penal change and argues for the importance of an appreciation of Welsh experience in providing alternative accounts. As well as concentrating on the issues arising from Carmarthen Gaol, the book also provides a theoretical discussion on the broader issues of state and penal development.

First published in 1989, Punishment examines the practice of punishment, not simply as a typical sanction employed by the state but as a pervasive feature of social organisation in both past and contemporary societies. With depth and rigour, they consider penal practice in a variety of historical and cultural contexts, such as the family, kinship and tribal groupings, small communities, educational institutions, the workplace and the commercial environment, criminal organisations, and the wider international community, as well as that of the state. In this way they widen the scope of the debate about the use of punishment as an instrument of human organisation, presenting different perspectives on the phenomenon of punishment and questioning the boundaries between different disciplines – juridical, philosophical, sociological, psychological and historical – within which the subject has been considered in the past. This book will be of interest to students and teachers of history, sociology, criminology, law, philosophy and psychology.