Punishment, Slavery and Degradation: Thorsten Sellin’s Legacy and Penology Today

• In Event: Historical Perspectives and Trends of Prisons and Inmates

Abstract

Forty years ago Thorsten Sellin’s Slavery and the Penal System (1976) was published. In this book Sellin elaborated on Gustav Radbruch’s (1938) ideas on how public punishment stems from punishment in the domestic sphere, that is, from the right of a slave’s owner to punish his property. Unfortunately, Slavery and the Penal System somehow slipped under the radar of the sociology and history of punishment and went, until recently, almost unnoticed. In this paper we will revisit Slavery and the Penal System and we will use the study as a point of departure to reflect critically upon recent penal developments and how these have been interpreted in the recent past. Despite the weaknesses of Sellin’s approach one key contribution of the book has been to draw attention to the (hidden) continuities in penal practice, that is, the ‘slavery element’ in state punishment. It is this sense of continuity that somehow has become lost in recent debate on punishment. What does it mean today to argue that ‘to be punished’ is to be treated ‘like a slave’?

Author

• Tom Daems, Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC), KU Leuven