In early modern England, prisoners relied on charity to survive. With next to no state funding, prisons were run for profit from fees and rents charged to those incarcerated, most of whom were either destitute debtors or awaiting criminal trial. As many of these prisoners were too impoverished to subsist in prison, let alone pay these fees, complex economies of aid developed around these institutions, and with these came ethical judgements about what prisoners deserved and how prisons might be used to punish and reform as well as to detain. My article in Social History 47.1 traces both these practices of prison charity and the developing ideologies of incarceration that they reveal, exploring new ideas about what prisons were for and how they might be used to shape and control social relations. Continue reading →