The ancestral punishment of the 21st century

Abstract

This project reviews the evolution of custodial sentences and shows their progress over time. We observe in it the social changes that may have influenced their conception and development, assessing at the same time whether they, having happened, have made current society to have discarded it as a priority penalty for the punishment of people after the violation of the rules imposed by the legislator, due to the emergence of new ways of social control. It is also interesting to know whether these innovations in the field of observation and surveillance, mostly technological ones, are attached to the fore coming sentences or, on the contrary, society in general and the legislator in particular takes for sure this type of systems, carrying on with punishment measures, more typical of ancestral control methods rather than current and modern 21st century ones. The conception of social changes dealing with punishment is a relevant concern in order to know, not only what paradigms the Spanish penitentiary system is developing but also what aspects the penal essence has changed from a social point of view.