In this work, British military officer, prison administrator and author Arthur Griffins discussed the period in French prison practice during the transition between the end of the Old Régime and the start of the New. It presents a view of the prisons of the period immediately following the Revolution. Contents include: After the Revolution The Great Seaport Prisons Celebrated French Convicts The First Great Detective The Combat with Crime Celebrated Cases The Course of the Law Mazas and La Santé Two Model Reformatories A Model Penitentiary

A multilayered social and cultural analysis that focuses upon the will of civil society and the will of those who actually lived and worked in the bagne, or penal colony.

British military officer and prison administrator Arthur Griffiths provided a concise history of prison in France. He covered everything from its origin to the situation during his time, delivering some unknown facts to the readers. Griffiths explained the various kinds of prisons that existed in France and the different features, practices, punishments, and disciplines that were followed. Contents include: Origins and Early History Struggle with the Sovereign Vincennes and the Bastile The Rise of Richelieu The People and the Bastile The Man with the Iron Mask The Power of the Bastile The Terror of Poison The Horrors of the Galleys The Dawn of Revolution Last Days of the Bastile

The judicial administration of France had its origin in the Feudal System. The great nobles ruled their estates side by side with, and not under, the King. With him the great barons exercised ÒhighÓ justice, extending to life and limb. The seigneurs and great clerics dispensed ÒmiddleÓ justice and imposed certain corporal penalties, while the power of ÒlowÓ justice, extending only to the amende and imprisonment, was wielded by smaller jurisdictions. The whole history of France is summed up in the persistent effort of the King to establish an absolute monarchy, and three centuries were passed in a struggle between nobles, parliaments and the eventually supreme ruler. Each jurisdiction was supported by various methods of enforcing its authority: All, however, had their prisons, which served many purposes. The prison was first of all a place of detention and durance where people deemed dangerous might be kept out of the way of doing harm and law-breakers could be called to account for their misdeeds. Accused persons were in it held safely until they could be arraigned before the tribunals, and after conviction by legal process were sentenced to the various penalties in force. The prison was de facto the high road to the scaffold on which the condemned suffered the extreme penalty by one or another of the forms of capital punishment, and death was dealt out indifferently by decapitation, the noose, the stake or the wheel. Too often where proof was weak or wanting, torture was called in to assist in extorting confession of guilt, and again, the same hideous practice was applied to the convicted, either to aggravate their pains or to compel the betrayal of suspected confederates and accomplices. The prison reflected every phase of passing criminality and was the constant home of wrong-doers of all categories, heinous and venial. Offenders against the common law met their just retribution. Many thousands were committed for sins political and non-criminal, the victims of an arbitrary monarch and his high-handed, irresponsible ministers. The prison was the KingÕs castle, his stronghold for the coercion and safe-keeping of all who conspired against his person or threatened his peace. It was a social reformatory in which he disciplined the dissolute and the wastrel, the loose-livers of both sexes, who were thus obliged to run straight and kept out of mischief by the stringent curtailment of their liberty. The prison, last of all, played into the hands of the rich against the poor, active champion of the commercial code, taking the side of creditors by holding all debtors fast until they could satisfy the legal, and at times illegal demands made upon them.

A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre. In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.

First published in 1887, “In Russian and French Prisons” is Peter Kropotkin's detailed critique of French and Russian prisons in the late 19th century. Within it, Kropotkin offers poignant descriptions of the conditions of those who undergo solitary confinement while offering his own panacea to the wealth of problems engendered by the existence of prisons: abolish them entirely. Although written over a century ago, Kropotkin's astute criticisms of the penal system are still very much relevant today. Contents include: “My First acquaintance With Russian Prisons”, “Russian Prisons”, “He Fortress Of St. Peter And St. Paul”, “Outcast Russia”, “The Exile In Siberia”, “The Exile On Sakhali”, “A Foreigner On Russian Prisons”, etc. Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842–1921) was a Russian writer, activist, revolutionary, economist, scientist, sociologist, essayist, historian, researcher, political scientist, geographer, geographer, biologist, philosopher and advocate of anarcho-communism. He was a prolific writer, producing a large number of pamphlets and articles, the most notable being “The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops” and “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”. This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with an excerpt from “Comrade Kropotkin” by Victor Robinson.