Historically, when people committed acts of violence, the focus was on making matters whole again, often through restitution to the victims or the victims’ families. With the rise in state power and the inability of the peasantry to pay monetary compensation, society increasingly resorted to corporal forms of punishment such as branding, whipping, and execution. It was not until the nineteenth century that prison was accepted as a reformed method of .

Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2022. 3p.