In 19th-century Europe, new insights and new demands placed upon the state caused significant changes in the understanding of punishments and penalisations. Retributive justice, which is based on pure retaliation for the offence without any other purpose, was replaced by utilitarianism. The understanding that punishment should be executed for a specific purpose and primarily to protect society, serving as a deterrence, had become the basis of the contemporary approach to punishments and penalisations. The reception of these ideas and their transforming into practical solutions was neither easy, fast, or gradual. The cultures of the 19th century Europe were far from uniform, neither in the economic nor in the spiritual and cultural sense. These principles continued to gain ground throughout the 19th-century Europe, eventually becoming universally accepted today.

A society without norms does not exist, just as norms that are not violated do not exist as well. The reaction of society to violation of basic norms on which it itself is based largely depends on the epoch, that is, on the value core on which the society itself is based. Imprisonment has always existed, but it has changed drastically throughout history - from imprisonment without purpose and meaning, alongside torment and suffering, to modern forms of deprivation of liberty and modern prisons. The ideological revolution has changed the value basis of society, thus changing all the norms that had arisen from such values. The perception and expectations of punishment have changed and, from the 18th and 19th centuries onwards, a new concept of prison as an institution of control, correction, or resocialization has been developing. Prison has ceased to be perceived as hell on earth and became an instrument of society's influence on those who dare to violate social norms. This paper follows this evolution, that is, the development of prisons and the idea of imprisonment from holes and dungeons to modern penitentiaries.