Why would eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reformers become so invested in creating conditions of punishment based on solitary confinement? Today, aside from death, solitary confinement—next to torture, or as a form of torture—is considered the worst form of punishment imaginable. Then, however, it was assumed to have an emancipatory effect. The body was placed in conditions of segregation and solitude in order to allow the soul to flourish. It is not accidental that most of the reformers of that era were deeply religious and therefore saw the architecture and regimes of the penitentiary as
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