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Podcast: New Books in Ancient History
Episode: Imperial Depths: Mark Letteney and Matthew Larsen on the Roman Prison System (JP)
Description: The notion of abolishing prisons strikes some as an impossible dream: could we could reasonably conceive of a society that responded to harm without the possibility of long-term confinement in purpose-built institutions? To others, we already have a template. Didn’t Michel Foucault long ago show us that prisons as they exist now–in all their horror, in all their commitment not just to jail people before trial but also to imprison them afterwards–come about only in the modern episteme, concomitant with capitalism and all sorts of attendant evils?
Actually, nope. Prisons are as old as the Roma...