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Podcast: NBN Book of the Day
Episode: Kiran Mehta, "To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
Description: Imprisonment was rarely used as punishment in Britain before 1800. The criminal justice system was based on terror and deterrence, sentencing convicts to the gallows at home and transportation overseas, with prisons serving primarily as holding spaces for the accused until the case against them was resolved. A major shift began in the late eighteenth century when imprisonment became an end in itself: a means to reform as well as to discipline criminal offenders.To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025) by Dr. Kiran Mehta revisits this revol...