Surveying prison architecture from earliest times, the author describes the preferred types of prison layout in various eras and locations, and considers how prison design has evolved over the centuries, how it has taken shape in various corners of the globe, and how it reflects the society that oversees it.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Norman Johnston knows more about the history of prisons and prison architecture than anyone in the world. Forms of Constraint is a superb piece of scholarship, fascinating for laypersons and extraordinarily functional for architects and historians of penology. There is nothing like it anywhere else.” — Marvin E. Wolfgang
Book Description
How social pressures have shaped prisons through history
From musty medieval dungeons to modern concrete cellblocks, prison architecture reveals much about how a society sees fit to control and contain those who transgress its boundaries. Forms of Constraint is the first general volume to consider how prison design has evolved over the centuries, how it has taken shape in various corners of the globe, and how it reflects the society that oversees it.
Rigorously documented and generously illustrated, Forms of Constraint surveys prison architecture from earliest times to the present. Embedding his discussion of architectural detail in a history of social ideas about prisoners and imprisonment, criminologist Norman Johnston considers the architectural design and features of prisons in light of the purposes they were meant to serve.
About the Author
Norman Johnston, professor emeritus of sociology at Arcadia University, is the author of The Human Cage: A Brief History of Prison Architecture and other books.
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