A just measure of pain
Michael Ignatieff

Subtitled The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850, A Just Measure of Pain describes the moment in 18th century England when the modern penitentiary and its ambiguous legacy were born. In depicting how the whip, the brand and the gallows – public punishments once meant to cow the unruly poor into passivity – came to be replaced by the moral management of the prison and the notion that the criminal poor should be involved in their own rehabilitation. Michael Ignatieff documents the rise of a new conception of class relations and with it a new philosophy of punishment, one directed not at the body but at the mind. A Just Measure of Pain is a highly atmospheric and compellingly written work of social history, which has already become a classic study of its subject. For the Penguin edition the author will provide an afterword concerning the polemics which followed the book’s first publication in 1978.