Penal system

A penal system is a system of ideologies and punishments a government uses to deal with crime. Such a system influences prison conditions, which punishments are used, etc.

Penal System Media

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  A 19th-century jail room at a Pennsylvania museum

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  A very common punishment in Early Modern Europe was to be made a galley slave. The galley pictured here belonged to the Mediterranean fleet of Louis XIV, c. 1694.

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  In the modern era, many fortified buildings, such as abbeys and fortresses, were converted to use as prisons. Pictured is the cloister of Clairvaux Abbey, converted to a prison exercise yard after secularization.

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  The beached convict ship HMS Discovery at Deptford served as a convict hulk between 1818 and 1834.

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  An 1855 engraving of New York's Sing Sing Penitentiary, which also followed the "Auburn (or Congregate) System", where prison cells were placed inside of rectangular buildings that lent themselves more to large-scale penal labor

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  Prisoners picking oakum at Coldbath Fields Prison in London, c. 1864

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  Shita (Shata) Prison in Israel. Many modern prisons are surrounded by a perimeter of high walls, razor wire or barbed wire, motion sensors and guard towers in order to prevent prisoners from escaping.

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  Design of a cell at ADX Florence