The Prison before the Panopticon

This eloquent, learned, and highly readable book offers a new and exciting account of Western theorists of imprisonment, from Demosthenes and Plato in democratic Athens to Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, and Jeremy Bentham. Uncovering unexpected convergences as well as sharp turns, Abolafia demonstrates that ancient and early modern thought bears directly on scholarly and policy debates today. His conclusion, that popularly authorized imprisonment can and should aim at strict punishment of criminal activity by the wealthy and powerful but leniency toward the poor and powerless, offers a salient challenge, both to advocates of prison abolition and to defenders of the carceral status quo. -- Josiah Ober, Stanford University Accessible, deft, and full of sparkling insights. Abolafia's fresh readings reveal unexpectedly relevant and sometimes radical patterns of 'prison thinking' in canonical texts. While persistently refusing to let the present capture the past, he speaks with clarity and depth to the problem of punishment in democratic theory. -- Demetra Kasimis, University of Chicago For decades now the prison has been seen as the quintessentially modern institution, defined by the conflicts and contexts of the 18th and 19th centuries. Jacob Abolafia's masterful treatment of ancient and classical Western thinking about incarceration as a form of punishment upends that timeline and reveals a far more complex set of commitments behind the institution than recent historians have acknowledged. -- Jonathan Simon, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law Superb. Abolafia meticulously demonstrates that pre-modern theories of incarceration were an essential precursor to the modern prison, raising the haunting possibility that today’s mass incarceration represents the failure of ideas that have been with us since the beginning of time. This book is a treasure trove, with many surprises. -- Bernard Harcourt, Columbia University Expertly unspooling the intellectual history of incarceration over two millennia, Abolafia's essential book explores the relationship between incarceration and democracy-and holds timely lessons for how to think differently about both. -- Rebecca Goldstein, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law