About this Book

Skotnicki (Catholic social ethics, Saint Patrick's Seminary, Menlo Park, California) traces the influence of changing religious ideas on changing attitudes about prisons during the course of US history. Paying attention not only to institutional religion but also to the popular trends that foreshadow institutional change, he looks at the evangelical millennium and the rise of the penitentiaries; New York and Pennsylvania as taking different roads to The Kingdom; sentimentalism, science and the Progressive Movement; religion, progress, and the end of the penitentiaries; and an institution in search of meaning. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.