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Coping in medieval prisons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2008

G. GELTNER
G. GELTNER
Affiliation:
Lincoln College, Oxford.
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Abstract

Based on archival research in several Italian city-states, this article examines medieval prison life, its attendant pains, and inmate coping strategies by substantially engaging the variety of scholarship on modern incarceration. It demonstrates the limited degree to which current hardships overlap with those of earlier forms of captivity, and underscores the diversity of inmates' social positions in both eras. Medieval prisoners were marginalized, but they avoided social liminality (a major present-day risk) largely thanks to their visibility, accessibility, and frequent interaction with free society.

Comment se débrouiller pour vivre dans les prisons médiévales

Dans cet article, qui est le résultat de recherches d'archives dans plusieurs des villes-états de l'Italie, nous étudions ce qu'a été la vie dans les prisons médiévales, les souffrances qui y sont liées et les stratégies auxquelles recouraient les détenus pour y faire face, en exploitant à tout ce qu'a apporté la recherche sur l'incarcération à l'époque moderne. Nous pouvons ainsi montrer combien peu les formes actuelles de souffrance en captivité concordent avec celles de temps antérieurs et souligner combien a été diverse, aux deux époques, l'origine sociale des détenus. Les prisonniers de l'époque médiévale vivaient en marge, mais l'exclusion sociale leur était épargnée, alors qu'elle est de nos jours un grand risque à prendre en compte. Cela était dÛ en grande partie au fait qu'ils étaient visibles, accessibles, et qu'ils avaient fréquemment la possibilité d'intervenir au sein de la société libre.

Wie man in mittelalterlichen gefängnissen zurecht kam

Auf der Basis von archivalischen Forschungen in mehreren italienischer Stadtstaaten untersucht dieser Aufsatz das mittelalterliche Gefängnisleben, die damit verbundenen Qualen und die Strategien der Insassen, damit fertig zu werden, indem er auch unterschiedliche Forschungsansätze zu modernen Gefängnissen systematisch berücksichtigt. Er zeigt, wie wenig die gegenwärtigen Härten des Strafvollzugs den früheren Formen der Gefangenschaft ähneln und unterstreicht, wie unterschiedlich die soziale Stellung der Insassen in beiden Zeiträumen war. Mittelalterliche Gefängnisinsassen waren marginalisiert, aber litten nicht unter sozialer Ausgrenzung (heute ein wesentliches Risiko), und zwar hauptsächlich deshalb, weil sie besser sichtbar und leichter zugänglich waren und es häufiger zur Interaktion mit den freien Mitgliedern der Gesellschaft kam.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 23 , Special Issue 1: SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE INSTITUTIONAL ORGANIZATION OF LAND MARKETS , May 2008 , pp. 151 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

ENDNOTES

1 The society of captives: a study of a maximum security prison (Princeton, 1958), 79.

2 Robert Johnson and Hans Toch eds., The pains of imprisonment (Beverly Hills, 1982); Edward Zamble and Frank J. Porporino, Coping, behavior and adaptation in prison inmates (New York, 1988); Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna eds., The effects of imprisonment (Portland, 2005).

3 Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1979), 160. A ‘total institution’ was seminally defined by Erving Goffman, in Asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates (Garden City, NY, 1961), xiii, as ‘a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life’.

4 On medieval incarceration see Martino Beltrani-Scalia, Sul governo e sulla riforma delle carceri in Italia: saggio storico e teorico (Turin, 1868), 211–348; Bertoletti, A., ‘Prigioni e prigioneri in Mantova dal secolo XIII al secolo XIX’, Bullettino ufficiale della Direzione Generale delle Carceri 17 (1887), 51–70Google Scholar, 163–82; Batiffol, Louis, ‘Le Châtelet de Paris vers 1400’, Revue Historique 61–63 (1896–1897), 225–64Google Scholar; 225–35; 42–55, 266–83; Gotthold Bohne, Die Freiheitsstrafe in den italienischen Stadtrechten des 12.–16. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1922–1925); Grand, Roger, ‘La prison et la notion d'emprisonnement dans l'ancien droit’, Revue Historique de Droit Français et Étranger, 4th ser., 19–20 (1940–1941), 58–87Google Scholar; Porteau-Bitker, Annik, ‘L'emprisonnement dans le droit laïque du moyen âge’, Revue Historique de Droit Français et Étranger 46 (1968), 211–45Google Scholar, 398–428; Ralph B. Pugh, Imprisonment in medieval England (Cambridge, 1968); Mirielle Vincent-Cassy, ‘Prison et châtiments à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Les marginaux et les exclus dans l'histoire (Paris, 1979), 262–74; Gonthier, Nicole, ‘Prisons et prisonniers à Lyon aux XIVe et XVe siècles’, Mémoires de la Société pour l'Histoire du Droit et des Institutions des Anciens Pays Bourguignons, Comtois et Romands 39 (1982), 15–30Google Scholar; M. Small, Carola, ‘Prisoners at the Castellany of Artois in the early fourteenth century’, Histoire Sociale – Social History 26 (1993), 345–72Google Scholar; Manikowska, Halina, ‘The Florentine communal prison – Le Stinche – in the fourteenth century’, Acta Poloniae Historica 71 (1995), 133–60Google Scholar; Edward M. Peters, ‘Prison before the prison: the ancient and medieval worlds’, in The Oxford history of the prison: the practice of punishment in western society, ed. N. Morris and D. J. Rothman (Oxford, 1995), 3–43; James Given, Inquisition and medieval society: power, discipline and resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca and London, 1997); and Jean Dunbabin, Captivity and imprisonment in medieval Europe, 1000–1300 (New York, 2002).

5 Geltner, The medieval prison, esp. chapter two. On the ruralization and disguises of modern prisons see William G. Nagel, The new red barn: a critical look at the modern American prison (New York, 1973), 47–9; The Home Office, New directions in prison design: report of a Home Office study of new generation prisons in the U.S.A. (London, 1985), 8–19; Mike Davis, City of quartz: excavating the future of Los Angeles (New York, 1992), 253–7.

6 See respectively Ginevra Niccolini di Camugliano, The chronicles of a Florentine family, 1200–1470 (London, 1933), 48; Paola Foschi, ‘I palazzi del Comune di Bologna nel Duecento’, in Bologna: Re Enzo e il suo mito: atti della Giornata di studio, 11 giugno 2000, ed. Antonio Ivan Pini and Anna Laura Trombetti Budriesi (Bologna, 2001), 94–100; ASS, Consiglio Generale [=CG], Deliberazioni [=Del.] 104, fols. 43r–44v (17 February 1327); ASF, Provvisioni, Registri 26, 118 (12 November 1333); and Moranvillé, H., ‘Note sur les prisons à la fin du XIVe siècle’, Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire de Paris 21 (1894), 74Google Scholar.

7 Geltner, The medieval prison, chapter three. For modern parallels in Brazil and Indonesia see respectively Drauzio Varella, Estação Carandiru (Sao Paolo, 1999), and Sujinah, In a Jakarta prison: life stories of women inmates, trans. Irfan Kortschak (Jakarta, 2000), passim.

8 Victor W. Turner, The ritual process: structure and anti-structure (Chicago, 1969), 95, and ‘Variations on a theme of liminality’, in Secular ritual, ed. Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Meyerhoff (Assen/Amsterdam, 1977), 36–52.

9 See Edward Sagarin, Deviants and deviancy (New York, 1975); David Downes and Paul Rock, Understanding deviance, 5th edn (Oxford, 2007).

10 Respectively, Lapo Mazzei, Lettere di un notaro a un mercante del secolo XIV con altre lettere e documenti, ed. Cesare Guasti, 2 vols. (Florence, 1880), 1:61, 2:343; N. Tommaseo, Della bellezza educatrice (Venice, 1838), 313; Curzio Mazzi ed., Il Burchiello: saggio di studi sulla sua vita e sulla sua poesia (Bologna, 1879), 69; Domenico M. Manni, Le veglie piacevoli, 2nd edn, 8 vols. (Florence, 1815–1816), 2:38; Lodovico Frati and Albano Sorbelli eds., Matthaei de Griffonibus memoriale historicum de rebus bononiensium (Città di Castello, 1902), 65–6. Literate activity in Venice is documented in Ferruccio Zago ed., Consiglio dei Dieci: deliberazioni miste, 3 vols. (Venice, 1962–1993) [=X Zago], Reg. VI, no. 570 (3:117). And see Maria Luisa Meneghetti, ‘Scrivere in carcere nel medioevo’, in Studi di filologia e letteratura italiani in onore di Maria Picchio Simonelli, ed. Pietro Frassica (Alessandria, 1993), 185–99; René Menage, ‘Deux poètes en prison: Maître Jean Régnier e le prisonnier desconforté de Loches’, in Exclus et systemes d’exclusion dans la litterature et la civilisation médiévales (Aix-en-Provence, 1978), 239–49; and Linne F. Mooney and Mary-Jo Arn eds., The Kingis Quair and other prison poems (Kalamazoo, MI, 2005).

11 C. D. Hassler ed., Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Egypti Peregrinationem, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1843–1849), 2:409–10.

12 Five hundred years of Venetian prison graffiti are being documented by Prof. Giandomenico Romanelli, Director of the Musei Civici di Venezia.

13 ASF, Atti dell'Escutore degli Ordinamenti di Giustizia [=AE] 501, fols. 14v (11 May 1367), 18v–19r (2 July 1367); 538, fols. 4v–5r (19 May 1368); 540, fol. 21v (4 April 1368) (this series contains the protocols of Le Stinche's supervisors); ASF, Soprastanti alle Stinche [=SS], Entrata e Uscita [=EU] 382, fol. 4r (30 October 1367); 388, fol. 1r (4 October 1376) (this is the prison's financial archive); X Zago, Reg. VI, nos. 406 (3:89), 443–5 (3:95), 599 (3:121); ASV, Maggior Consiglio, Deliberazioni [=MC Delib.] 20 (Liber Novella), fol. 404v (6 June 1382).

14 Zdekauer, Ludovico, ‘Il gioco in Italia nei secoli XIII e XIV e specialmente in Firenze’, Archivio Storico Italiano, 4th ser., 18 (1886), 20–74Google Scholar; 19 (1887), 3–22; Gherardo Ortalli ed., Gioco e giustizia nell'Italia di Comune (Treviso, 1993); Franco Sacchetti, Il trecentonovelle, ed. Emilio Faccioli (Turin, 1970), LXXXI (208–10). For archival documentation see below.

15 ASF, Statuti 1355, L. I, R. LIV, fol. 45v.

16 ASF, AE 489, fol. 12r–v (27 November 1366); 538, fols. 19v–20r (29 August 1368); 674, fol. 32r (4 March 1373).

17 ASV, Avogaria di Comun [=AC] 3644, Reg. 1, fol. 8v (27 October 1378).

18 Albert K. Cohen et al. eds., Prison violence (Lexington, 1976); Johnson and Toch eds., The pains of imprisonment, 63–93; Richard Sparks et al., Prisons and the problem of order (Oxford, 1996); Edgar Kimmett et al., Prison violence: the dynamics of conflict, fear and power (Cullompton, 2003); Nacci, Peter L. and Kane, Thomas R., ‘The incidence of sex and sexual aggression in Federal prisons’, Federal Probation 47 (1983), 31–6Google Scholar; Michael C. Braswell et al. eds., Prison violence in America, 2nd edn (Cincinnati, 1994); Ellis, Desmond et al. , ‘Violence in prisons: a sociological analysis’, American Journal of Sociology 80 (1974), 16–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On inmate dissidence generally see King, Roy D. and McDermott, Kathleen, ‘“My geranium is subversive”: some notes on the management of trouble in prisons’, The British Journal of Sociology 41 (1990), 445–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See ASB, Curia del Podestà, Corona ed Armi, b. 29, Reg. 1332II (20 August 1322); ASF, Provvisioni, Registri 33, fols. 6v–7r (9 June 1344), respectively, and see Villani, Nuova cronica, XIII, xvii, ed. Giuseppe Porta, 3 vols. (Parma, 1990–1991), 3:333–4. According to Carniello, Brian R. (‘The rise of an administrative elite in medieval Bologna: notaries and popular government, 1282–1292’, Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002), 344–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar and n. 94), prison notaries were hard to recruit on account of their fear of violence. But there is little evidence to support their concern.

20 Compare ASF, AE 129 (1349; the earliest surviving charter) and AE 489 (1366) or any subsequent register until 1400.

21 ASF, AE 1401, fol. 3r (7 May 1400): ‘irato animo et malo modo multas et varias rissas ac rumores et percussiones, tam manu vacuis quam cum ferro, videlicet percutiendo et vulnerendo unus alterum’.

22 See Lee H. Bowker, Prison victimization (New York, 1980).

23 ASL, AnzianFi avanti la libertà 2, fol. 63 (17 September, 1330): ‘ne ipsi carcerati ultra debitum et convenientum modum graventur, vel contra eos fieri aliqua extortio, intolerabilis iniqua vel iniusta’. And see ASPa, Comune 10, fols. 31v–32r (1 December 1388), 65v–67v (4 July 1395); 36, fols. 5v–6r (3 November 1317), 14r (1 October 1323?).

24 For the prison's ground plan see Becchi, Sulle Stinche di Firenze e su'nuovi edifizi eretti in quel luogo (Florence, 1839), pl. II. A reconstruction is in Geltner, The medieval prison, Appendix 3.

25 ASF, AE 573, fol. 18r (26 March 1369).

26 Respectively, ASV, MC Delib., 20 (Liber Novella), fol. 404v (6 June 1382); ASL, Sentenze e bandi 7, unnumbered fols. (5 April 1337); and Statuta Communis Parmae ab anno MCCLXVI ad circiter MCCCIV (Parma, 1857), 174.

27 Emilio Paolo Vicini ed., Respublica Mutinensis (1306–1307), 2 vols. (Milan, 1929–1932), 1:185.

28 ASF, AE 148, fol. 22v (23 July 1350).

29 For Venice see Antonino Lombardo ed., Le deliberazioni del Consiglio dei XL della Repubblica di Venezia, 3 vols. (Venice, 1957–1967), Reg. 22, nos. 129–33 (1:36–7), Reg. 25, no. 54 (3:18), and X Zago, Reg. V, nos. 405–6, 448–9 (3:157, 169–71). For Bologna see ASB, Governo [=Gov.], Riformagioni e Provvigioni [=RP], Riformagioni del Consiglio del Popolo e della Massa [=CPM] 221, fol. 50v (5 September 1321); RP, Riformagioni e Provvigioni (serie cartacea) 225, Reg. 49, fol. 103v (1 April 1333); Pod. Corone ed Armi, b. 3, Reg. 3, fol. 32r (29 August, 1291); b. 18, Reg. 4, fols. 79r–80r (27 August, 1310); b. 28, Reg. 1332II, fol. 27r (20 August 1322); Ufficio dei Memoriali 101, fol. 502r (January 1301). For Florence see ASF, Riformagioni e Provvigioni [=RP] 19, 59 (18 March 1323), fols. 82r–83r; 20, 33 (12 December 1323), fol. 47r–v; 27, 173 (26 April 1334), fol. 108r–v; 27, 142 (26 July 1336), fols. 65v–66r. For Siena see ASS, CG Del. 106, fols. 120v–122v (27 December 1328). See also Gonthier, ‘Prisons et prisonniers à Lyon’, 20.

30 Sacchetti, Il trecentonovelle, CXXXIX (361–2).

31 Marek M. Kaminski, Games prisoners play: the tragicomic worlds of Polish prison (Princeton, 2004), 41–6, 134–8. And see Victor F. Nelson, Prison days and nights (Boston, 1933), 158–60, 164–5; Piri Thomas, Down these mean streets (New York, 1967), 267; Edward Buckner, The animal factory (New York, 1977), 12; Jack Henry Abbott, In the belly of the beast: letters from prison (London, 1982), 79; Jimmy A. Lerner, You got nothing coming: notes from a prison fish (New York, 2002), 152–6.

32 Joseph F. Fishman, Sex in prison: revealing sex conditions in American prisons (London, 1935), 83–5; Esther Hefferman, Making it in prison: the square, the cool, and the life (New York, 1972), 92–7; Wayne S. Wooden and Jay Parker, Men behind bars: sexual exploitation in prison (New York and London, 1982), 1–3, 74–6, 91–2, 101–20; Hans Toch, Living in prison: the sociology of survival (New York, 1977), 50–7; Richmond, Katy, ‘Fear of homosexuality and modes of rationalisation in male prisons’, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 14 (1978), 51–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anne Applebaum, Gulag: a history of the Soviet camps (London, 2003), 288–9, 482.

33 Sacchetti, Il trecentonovelle, CXXXIX (362).

34 Michele Barbi ed., Novella del grasso legnaiuolo nella relazione di codice Palatino 200 (Florence, 1968), 140.

35 Robert M. Lindner, Stone walls and men (New York, 1946), 420–1; Garfinkel, Harold, ‘Conditions of successful degradation ceremonies’, American Journal of Sociology 61 (1956), 420–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John J. Gibbs, ‘The first cut is the deepest: psychological breakdown and survival in the detention setting’, in Johnson and Toch eds., The pains of imprisonment, 97–114; Zamble and Porporino, Coping, behavior and adaptation, 76–91.

36 Respectively, Goffman, Asylums, 69–70, and Donald Clemmer, The prison community (New York, 1958), 297.

37 David Herlihy, ‘Some psychological and social roots of violence in the Tuscan cities’, in Lauro Martines ed., Violence and civil disorder in Italian cities, 1200–1500 (Berkeley, 1972), 129–54; Jacques Heers, Le clan familial au Moyen Age: étude sur les structures politiques et sociales des milieux urbains (Paris, 1974); Smail, Daniel Lord, ‘Common violence: vengeance and inquisition in fourteenth-century Marseilles’, Past & Present 151 (1996), 29–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dean, Trevor, ‘Marriage and mutilation: vendetta in late medieval Italy’, Past & Present 157 (1997), 3–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrea Zorzi, ‘La cultura della vendetta nel conflitto politico in età comunale’, in Le storie e la memoria: in onore di Arnold Esch (Florence, 2002), 135–70; Claude Gauvard, Violence et ordre public au moyen âge (Paris, 2005). See also David Nirenberg, Communities of violence: persecution of minorities in the middle ages (Princeton, 1996); and Wolfgang Sofsky, Saggio sulla violenza, trans. Barbara Trapani and Luca Lamberti (Turin, 1998).

38 Dunbabin, Captivity and imprisonment, 42–3.

39 ASB, Curia del Podestà, Sindacato, Reg. 1286 I/1, fol. 31r (28 March 1286). And see Hermann U. Kantorowicz, Albertus Gandinus und das Strafrecht der Scholastik (Berlin, 1907), nos. 44, 134 (270–7, 367–70). On Arras, see Small, ‘Prisoners at the Castellany of Artois’, 351, 365–6.

40 For individual and institutional charity see ASPi, Provvisioni e consigli 99, fols. 9v–10r (1 July 1332); A. Grion ed., ‘La “Legenda” del B. Venturino da Bergamo secondo il testo inedito del codice di Cividale’, Bergomum, n.s. 30 (1956), 46, 71; Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: the religion of the Italian communes, 1125–1325 (University Park, PA, 2005), 106, 195; Aubert, Félix, ‘Le parlement et les prisonniers’, Bulletin de la société d'histoire de Paris 20 (1893), 103Google Scholar; Daniel Waley, Siena and the Sienese in the thirteenth century (Cambridge, 1991), 143; Moranvillé, ‘Note sur les prisons’, 73; Gonthier, ‘Prisons et prisonniers à Lyon’, 22; Small, ‘Prisoners at the Castellany of Artois’, 351–2.

41 Toch, Living in prison, 52–6; Ann Cordilia, The making of an inmate: prison as a way of life (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 31–46; Ulla V. Bondesson, Prisoners in prison societies (New Brunswick, NJ and Oxford, 1989), 158–9. On incarceration's impact on family life see Pauline Morris, Prisoners and their families (London, 1965); Jill Matthews, Forgotten victims: how prison affects the family (London, 1983); Roger Shaw, Children of imprisoned fathers (London, 1987), and Prisoners' children: what are the issues? (London and New York, 1993).

42 Human Rights Watch, Prison conditions in the United States (New York, 1991), 58–60. In the course of one year, 41 per cent of the Trenton inmates studied by Sykes (The society of captives, 65) received not a single visitor. Visitations rates in 1980s Canada, as tracked by Zamble and Porporino (Coping, behavior and adaptation, 81–2), are marginally higher.

43 Devereux, George and Moos, Malcolm C., ‘The social structure of prisons, and the organic tensions’, Journal of Criminal Psychopathology 4 (1942), 306–24Google Scholar; McCorckle, Lloyd W. and Corn, Richard, ‘Resocialization within walls’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 293 (1954), 95–6Google Scholar; Wheeler, Stanton, ‘Socialization in correctional communities’, American Sociological Review 26 (1961), 697–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mary Koscheski et al., ‘Consensual sexual behavior’, in Christopher Hensely ed., Prison sex: practice and policy (Boulder and London, 2002), 111–31; Blackler, Chairmian, ‘Primary recidivism in adult men: differences between men on first and second prison sentence’, British Journal of Criminology 8 (1966), 130–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mike Fitzgerald, ‘The telephone rings: long-term imprisonment’, in Anthony E. Bottoms and Roy Light eds., Long-term imprisonment (Aldershot, 1987), 142–57; Sheila R. Lochhead, Outside in: a study of prison visiting (York, 1993), 26–33.

44 Liberalization of visitations is endorsed by George Saleebey in The non-prison: a new approach to treating youthful offenders (Milwaukee, 1970), 20–4, and critiqued by Lembo, Joseph James in ‘The relationship of institutional disciplinary infractions and the inmate's personal contact with the outside community’, Criminologica 50 (1969–70), 50–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and by Ruth Jamieson and Adrian Grounds in ‘Release and adjustment: perspectives from studies of wrongly convicted and politically motivated prisoners', in Liebling and Maruna eds., The effects of imprisonment, 41–2. And see Leese, M. et al. , ‘An ecological study of factors associated with rates of self-inflicted death in prison in England and Wales’, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 29 (2006), 355–60CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

45 Banister, P. A. et al. , ‘Psychological correlates of long-term imprisonment, I–II’, British Journal of Criminology 13 (1973), 312–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Gunn et al., Psychiatric aspects of imprisonment (London, 1978); Bukstel, Lee H. and Kilman, Peter R., ‘Psychological effects of imprisonment on confined individuals’, Psychological Bulletin 88 (1980), 469–93CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bonta, James and Gendreau, Paul, ‘Reexamining the cruel and unusual punishment of prison life’, Law and Human Behavior 14 (1990), 347–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fazel, Seena and Danesh, John, ‘Serious mental disorder in 23000 prisoners: a systematic review of 62 surveys’, The Lancet 359 (2002), 545–50CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Fazel, Seena and Benning, Ram, ‘Natural deaths in male prisoners: a 20-year mortality study’, The European Journal of Public Health 16 (2006), 441–4CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

46 Joan Petersilia, When prisoners come home: parole and prisoner reentry (Oxford, 2003), 3; and see Timothy J. Flanagan ed., Long-term imprisonment: policy, science and correctional practice (Thousand Oaks, CA, 1995), 3–9, and Liebling and Maruna, The effects of imprisonment, 1–32.

47 ASS, CG Del. 104, fols. 43r–44v (17 February 1327); and Agnolo di Tura del Grasso (attributed), Cronaca maggiore, in Cronache senesi, ed. Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti (Bologna, 1933–1935), 526.

48 For Venice see ASV, AC 3641, fols. 112r (22 January 1332), 173r (4 September 1337); 3642, fol. 49v (3 March 1343); 3644, Reg. 1, fols. 22v–23r (13 September 1380), 41r–v (21 April 1382), 78v (16 August 1385), Reg. 2, fol. 11r (30 January 1387). For Florence see ASF, SS Car. 82, 91. Small (‘Prisoners at the Castellany of Artois’, 365) notes only two casualties at Arras in the first half of the fourteenth century. Death rates in English prisons were higher, according to Pugh, Imprisonment in medieval England, 331, and H. S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England: studies in an age of transition (Cambridge, 1968), 175–6.

49 Alexander Murray, Suicide in the middle ages, 3 vols. (Oxford and New York, 1998–), 1:154–60, 185–91, 295–304.

50 Fazel, Seena et al. , ‘Suicide in male prisons in England and Wales, 1978–2003’, The Lancet 366 (2005), 1301–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is the most systematic study to date. And see Alison Liebling, Suicides in prison (London and New York, 1992); Nicolas Bourgoin, Le suicide en prison (Paris, 1994); Alison Liebling and Tony Ward eds., Deaths in custody: international perspectives (Bournemouth, 1994); Roger Matthews, Doing time: an introduction to the sociology of imprisonment (Basingstoke and London, 1999), 69–72; Hans Toch, Men in crisis: human breakdowns in prison (Chicago, 1975), 127–43; and Bruce L. Danto ed., Jail house blues: studies of suicidal behavior in jail and prison (Orchard Lake, 1973).

51 Il primo libro del l'opere burlesche di M. Francesco Berni (edited anonymously; Florence, 1552), fol. 53r.

52 Small, ‘Prisoners at the Castellany of Artois’, 364, and Geltner, The medieval prison, chapter three. According to Wakefield, Walter L. (‘Friar Ferrier, inquisition at Caunes, and escapes from prison at Carcassone’, Catholic History Review 58 (1972), 220–37Google Scholar), escapes from the royal prison at Carcassone were rare, despite allegedly harsh conditions. According to Pugh (Imprisonment in medieval England, 219–24), escapes from English prisons were more common.

53 See Smail, ‘Common violence’, 48. According to Applebaum (Gulag, 355–70), some Soviet governors relied on the mere reputation of the Russian wilderness to keep prisoners at bay, never bothering to surround their camps with a fence.

54 Turner, The ritual process, 95, and ‘Variations on a theme of liminality’, 36–52.

55 Alison Liebling (assisted by Helen Arnold), Prisons and their moral performance: a study of values, quality, and prison life (Oxford, 2004), 432.

56 Mark S. Fleisher, Warehousing violence (Newbury Park, 1989); Löic Wacquant, Deadly symbiosis: the rise of neoliberal penalty (Oxford, 2003).

57 ‘Prisonization’ was originally coined by Clemmer (The prison community, 300). See also Wheeler, ‘Socialization in correctional communities’, 697–712.

58 Sir Alexander Paterson, member of the UK Prison Commission between 1922 and 1947, quoted in Howard Jones et al., Open prisons (London, 1977), 5.

59 See above, nn. 43–4.

60 James B. Jacobs, New perspectives on prisons and imprisonment (Ithaca and London, 1983), 99–106; Nick Flynn, ‘Resettlement prisons: fulfilling the Prison Service National Statement of Purpose’ (London, 1996).

61 Leslie Fairweather, ‘Psychological effects of the prison environment’, in Leslie Fairweather and Seán McConville eds., Prison architecture: policy, design and experience (Oxford, 2000), 34.