Winner of the 1991 Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association Winner of the Outstanding Scholarship Award of the Crime and Delinquency Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, USA The first comprehensive account of the role of punishment in modern society, this book buils upon the work of Durkheim, Foucault, and others, and provides a fascinating interpretation of this complex social institution, showing how penal institutions interact with strategies of power, socio-economic structures, and cultural sensibilities.