Introduction
Carnival, Execution and Civilization
The Disappearance of Prison
The Amelioration of Prison Life
The Sanitization of Penal Language
The Memories of Prisoners
Bureaucratization and Indifference
The Breakdown of Civilization
The Gulag and Beyond

Professor John Pratt graduated in law from London University before studying criminology for graduate degrees at the universities of Keele and Sheffield in England. His research interests are in the areas of the sociology and history of punishment, and criminological and social theory.
Professor Pratt has published extensively in these areas, including ¿Punishment in a Perfect Society¿ (1993), ¿Governing the Dangerous¿ (1998), ¿Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order (with Mark Brown, 2000), ¿Punishment and Civilization¿ (2002).
Since 1997, Professor Pratt has been editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology.

This book examines how a framework of punishment that suited the values of the civilized world came to be set in place from around 1800 to the late 20th century. John Pratt draws on research about prison architecture, clothing, diet, hygienic arrangements and changes in penal language to establish this.