Prisons were virtually non existent before the 1700s; prison was not considered a serious punishment for crime, and was seldom used. Instead, governments imprisoned people who were awaiting trial or punishment whereupon they would receive the more common capital or corporal types of punishment. Common punishments at that time included branding, imposing fines, whipping and the death penalty (capital punishment). The authorities punished most offenders in public in order to discourage people from breaking the …showed first 75 words of 2513 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2513 total…Trevelyan, History of England, 1985 Sir L. Woodward, The Age of Reform; 1815-1870, 1962 L. Stone, Social Change and Revolution in England, 1965 James Walvin, Victorian Values, 1987 Microsoft, Encarta, 1998 Sydney Wood, Living in Victorian Times, 1985 Roy D. King, The Future of the Prison System, 1980 Kenneth O. Morgan, The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, 1984 Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1997 Home Office, Report on the Work of the Prison Department, -1977 Labour Party, The Labour Party Website: http://www.labour.org.uk, 1998